Binding Ties
by Lydi Gomistan
Summary: AHBL AU. Prue goes with Leo to the Underworld, where she strikes a Faustian deal with the Source. As with all such deals, however, there is a catch. Rated for coercion, torture, violence, reference to suicide, and eventual character deaths. Cole/Prue
1. Dealing with Devils

"Binding Ties"

Disclaimer: Aaron Spelling and the former WB own _Charmed_, which is the creation of Constance M. Burge. I own nothing, and no profit is being made from this work of fan fiction.

She did it for love. Prue smiled weakly despite the tears that threatened to fall. In any other place, at any other time, she might have laughed at the irony. Here in this dank cave, surrounded by a handful of flickering candles, after the ordeal she had just gone through, she needed most of her inner strength to suppress the grief that arose from that thought. The other thoughts that followed it weren't much better.

She had been reasonably sure that Tempus would carry out the Source's order to restart the day, if only because the exposure of magic threatened evil and good alike. Leo had orbed Phoebe out of the Underworld; Prue had seen to that herself, despite her sister's protests that she hadn't found Cole yet and that she wouldn't leave without Prue. All of her considerable skill at intimidation had been necessary to make Phoebe see that this was the only way to fix things. She had said the same thing earlier, when Leo came to the hospital. The two of them had finally orbed to the Underworld, found Phoebe and gotten her out. Then Prue went before the Source to fix her own mess and save her sisters. She had made a deal with the devil himself.

Piper would not die of that random gunshot wound. Phoebe wouldn't be targeted because of her relationship with Cole. The horrible way she'd treated that innocent misguided girl, the near death of Dr. Griffiths, the position she'd put Darryl Morris into -- all would be undone when the day started over. Prue had to believe that.

Her family was saved, and the only price had been her life. The life of one of the Charmed Ones in exchange, the Source had said, and there had never been a question in Prue's mind that she would be the one. She'd thought when she was standing before the Source, her hands still covered in Piper's blood, that she was agreeing to her own immediate death. The next thing she knew, she was regaining consciousness in this dimly lit, musty cavern.

"Well, well. Of all the people I never imagined I'd see in the Underworld. That's where you still are, by the way." Prue turned sharply toward the familiar voice, just as its owner stepped out of the cave's shadowy entrance. The thick chains tying her hands to the cave wall didn't give much, but as she twisted against them, struggling to sit upright,

her visitor came briefly into her line of sight. She gritted her teeth when she recognized him.

"Cole. What are you doing here? What am _I _doing here?"

He smirked and walked further into the cave. "The Source changed his mind at the last minute." Cole sat down on a rocky outcropping hidden in shadow, folding his hands in his lap. A moment passed in silence before Prue narrowed her eyes in his general direction. "What does that mean, Cole? Are you saying Tempus didn't reset time after all?"

His smirk widened as he shook his head. "Actually, that happened right before I was sent in here. Some arrangements had to be made before the reset. Tempus had to pause time for…a while."

Now Prue glowered towards him outright while she struggled with her bonds. "Arrangements? Pausing time? What the hell are you saying?"

In reply, Cole gestured around the cavern. "The Source decided that you're more valuable to him here in the Underworld, alive. So, he devised a plan to fake your death, and told Tempus to pause time while it was prepared and put into place." At her outraged and disbelieving look, he went on. "I wasn't involved in the planning. The Source hasn't been exactly quick to trust me again after my uneven display of loyalty to the brotherhood. In addition to everything else."

Her glare lost none of its intensity even as she smirked. "I'll bet. Which brings me back to my first two questions. What am I doing here, and why were you, of all demons, appointed to _welcome _me?"

He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise as he got to his feet and came toward her. Being

careful to remain in the shadows and beyond the reach of her ability to send him flying

with a pointed look, he replied, "You'd have preferred one of the Source's bodyguards break the news, some demon you've never heard of before? Does the saying 'better the devil you know' not mean anything to you, Prue?"

She rolled her eyes toward what she assumed could only be the cave's ceiling, although she couldn't see it through the lengthy shadows. "It would probably mean more to me right now if the devil in question would actually tell me something useful, instead of blowing hot air."

To her annoyance, all she got in reply was a deep chuckle. "I've already told you several useful pieces of information, particularly about how important the Source considers you to be. Think about it. I told you that he had time paused in order to fake your death, and fake it convincingly. He also had very ancient, powerful dark magic performed on a certain type of lower level demon using your blood, so that the demon was altered to look like you, to be you, down to your DNA. Tempus showed it how you acted during the timeline he would erase, told it to mimic that, and had it get in place. Then he reset time. Shax attacked at the Manor and killed the decoy."

Prue blinked a few times, taking the story in. Demons lied all the time, of course, but that

one was pretty elaborate and creative as lies went. She had to give Cole and the Source some credit. "Nice try. How did the Source get my blood? What did he expect to happen when Leo tried to heal this decoy?"

Cole took a step into the sphere of candlelight surrounding her. "Promise me you won't hurl me to the ground, and I'll show you. I'll even tell you why he went to all that trouble."

Prue didn't need more than a few seconds to decide that she would rather

have some answers she could use, even false ones, than the momentary satisfaction of using her powers on Cole. She nodded at him. "Fine. I won't use my powers on you, yet. But if you do anything other than playing the messenger, all bets are off."

She barely made out his nod before he took another tentative step into the light.

Still slightly wary, he crossed in front of her and put a hand on her upper right arm. She flinched. He held the heavy chain out of the way and carefully moved her arm forward. There, almost on her shoulder, was a scar in roughly the shape of an elongated oval. She gasped. Cole looked at her, and explained, "The Source bled you through that cut, then sealed the wound. But he wanted to leave that scar to remind you of the deal you struck with him."

Despite her shock, Prue did recognize the shape. "A _vesica piscis. _The triquetra consists of three of them intersecting in the middle of a circle. The only time I've seen one on its own like this, and not around a religious painting," she looked up at him pointedly, "was when Andras stripped our powers, and the triquetra on the cover of the Book of Shadows separated."

He met her gaze evenly. Finally, she asked, "So when Leo went to heal the decoy, could he tell it wasn't me?"

Cole shook his head. "It had your blood, meaning your powers and the connection you had to him as his charge. As far as he could sense, it was you. Shax fatally wounded it, and it played dead."

Prue closed her eyes, realizing the rest. "Whitelighters can't heal demons, but Leo believed it was my time, because he thought it was me, and they also can't heal the dead. Oh, God." She remained still for a moment. Then her eyes flew open. They gleamed triumphantly. "My soul. What about my soul? Because unless I'm very mistaken, I've still got that. But the Angel of Death would come for it if he thought I'd died."

Cole squeezed lightly around the scar on her arm. The thin pale line of the _vesica piscis _glowed. "The alchemist you three fought about seven months ago, you remember him?" Prue nodded, briefly distracted by the tingling on her arm.

"We vanquished him and his Frankenstein of a life essence," she reminded him. She still didn't know how much he knew about events during the period when she and Piper thought he was dead.

He chuckled at her continued bravado. "Well, there are other alchemists who work directly for the Source. They tend to be more skilled than an independent operator like the one you encountered. The life essences they create from a subject's blood _can _fool the Angel of Death. Not only him, either."

She stared at him. "No. There is no way some artificial spirit-form concocted from my blood would fool my mother or my grandmother." He released his hold on her arm and stepped back. Simple self-preservation told him that he should get out of the direct path of the fireworks to come. On the edge of the circle of candlelight, he paused.

"You'd be surprised," Cole told her. "A well-made life essence reflects every aspect of the subject's life history, knowledge and personality. Your mother and grandmother also might not scrutinize the essence as closely you think, when observing your grieving sisters from afar forces them to confront their deepest fears. The Source has his reasons for believing that a well-mixed essence surrounded by enough dark magic could then fool even Penny Halliwell." He ducked back into the shadows.

Prue was left stunned. The sheer complexity of the plan was one thing; its arrogant audacity was something else. She'd expect nothing less of the ruler of the Underworld and his demonic henchmen, though. Cole, one of those henchmen, had seemed pretty convinced that her family, living and dead, wouldn't catch on to the deception. Through the swirl of her conflicting emotions, Prue seized on that assumption, and a small plan of her own formed. She had been able to warn her sisters that way before, hadn't she?

"Well," she finally muttered, "I guess if the Source went to all that trouble, he wants to keep me here for a while. So how about you make sure my arms don't go permanently stiff by unlocking these chains?"

Cautiously, Cole once again emerged from the shadows. "You couldn't easily hurl me across this cave with stiff arms," he remarked, but at her glare he went to the manacles which secured her wrists above her head. Taking a rusty key from his pocket, he unlocked them and pulled away the chains.

Prue eyed him as she rubbed her wrists. "Thanks," she said. Then she set her thoughts on one goal, home, and tried to astral project to the manor. As soon as she connected with the core of herself and gave it a push outward, however, she felt a stronger force pushing the projection back into her mind. She came back to herself, dizzy, and looked up to see Cole still standing in front of her.

"I was wondering when you would try that," he told her. "You can't astral project to the surface from this deep in the Underworld. Too many layers of shielding spells, and obviously the general amount of black magic. Trying to break through will only drain you."

Prue rested her head against the cave wall while one of her now freed hands tried to rub away the headache she could feel starting. He studied her for a moment. Perhaps the emerging details of the funeral he should leave out for now. She surprised him a little, though, by opening her eyes a few seconds later, and looking him in the eye. "What is it the Source wants from me?"


	2. Prophecy of Hecate

A/N: The first three quotes in this chapter are from episode 2x08, "P3 H2O", and the last one is from episode 3x02, "Magic Hour". Those, and the rest of _Charmed, _belong to Aaron Spelling et al. The Disney movie referenced belongs to the Walt Disney Co.

The smirk returned to Cole's face. "I'm sure you could guess what he wants most. You know he could have killed you on the spot, but he saw potential in you."

"Potential?" Prue shook her head, trying to work past the pain. "Potential for what, evil? You have got to be kidding me. There is no way I would ever --"

"Even though you already have turned once before?" he interrupted her. "Donatalian _was _successful, whether you want to admit it to me or not. Sure, she acted without the Source's approval, but reports got back to him about how completely your loyalties shifted."

Prue put her hands against the cool stone wall behind her, and used it to brace herself as she stood up. She decided to keep her hands right where they were when her head swam with dizziness from the sudden movement. Absently, she wondered how long she had been tied to the wall. Then she remembered the time reversal; just thinking about it made her headache worse. It was better to just focus on the demon in front of her.

"That's an exaggeration. I know there were some key developments you missed out on while you were shimmering all over to avoid bounty hunters," she told him archly, "So I'll spell it out for you. One, I was kidnapped and magically bound and gagged; two, I wasn't actually conscious when the 'wedding' took place; and three, Donatalian's goal was to turn the Book of Shadows evil through me so she could get it for herself. I was just a conduit."

Cole pretended to consider her words for a moment. Sensing that little harm could come to him while she seemed to be so weak, he moved half a step closer. "The most powerful conduit she could have, though. Anyway, you'll be relieved to hear that the Source's current plan gives you a more active role. Not only does he want to turn you to have your powers at his disposal, he also believes that you are the key that will allow him to co-opt an ancient prophecy."

She frowned at him, but ignored the attempt to nettle her. "What prophecy? Other than Melinda Warren's prophecy about the Charmed Ones, I have no idea what prophecy could possibly involve me."

"The Source only found out about it recently himself," Cole replied. "Which is interesting because it's about as old as the prophecy of the Charmed Ones. I'll spare you the details about how it was finally found. He analyzed it and consulted with the sorcerer who uncovered it. Everything points to you being the best candidate to allow the Source to claim the power of the prophecy for evil."

Prue kept her palms flat against the cool stone wall and tried taking a step forward. Her legs were still stiff. "And what does this prophecy say? What role am I supposedly the 'best candidate' for?"

Cole wrinkled his brow, pretending to have difficulty remembering. He didn't know everything about the prophecy, of course. The Source still kept him at a strict "need to know" status. Prue was about to join him in that part of the game. "The prophecy foretells the birth of a magical child, one destined to be the most powerful magical being ever known to either side. It gives specifics about three signs that will herald the child's birth, and predicts that based on those signs, the child will probably be born early in the second millennium of the era."

She blinked. One hand went back against her forehead. The coolness it had absorbed from the stone helped soothe her headache, and she felt that she could use all the help she could get. "So, what, I'm supposed to be…" Prue stopped when the implication hit. She glared at Cole. "No! Not a chance in any level of hell! Really, you might as well just take out an athame and slit my throat now, because I would gladly die rather than let the Source turn me into Rosemary Woodhouse."

Her glower was gaining strength, and Cole figured that meant she'd feel ready to leave this particular cavern soon, if nothing else. "I figured you'd say something like that, but more importantly, so did the Source. But he thinks that a certain piece of information, and what he could do with it, will make you reconsider. Now, I don't know everything he knows, and I've told you why, but you'll want to know what I do know. "

She sighed, and rolled her eyes at him. "Which is what, exactly? What could the Source possibly think would be important enough to me that I'd agree to this plan of his?"

He met her exasperated look dead on. "Your sister, and the future of the Charmed Ones."

Her shock and anger made her let go of the wall. Unsteadily, she took two quick steps forward. Cole caught her hands. She looked up at him, furious. "The Source promised me he wouldn't go after Phoebe, and that Piper would be alright after time was reset. How does he think breaking his end of our deal gets me on his side?"

Cole shook his head. "He doesn't intend to break the deal. He's referring to your other sister."

Prue's glare reflected her impatient suspicion. She yanked her hands free of his grasp. "My _other_ sister? I only have two sisters, Cole."

His smirk returned, but it wasn't as full as it had been. "Not according to what the Source discovered. All the Underworld's full of rumors about how she remained off any magical radar this long, but the basic details are that she's almost twenty four years old, works at a social services agency, and is apparently half-whitelighter."

She took a step back. _Another sister,_ _a_ _half-whitelighter. _How, Prue asked herself, was that even possible? Then she remembered. First words and then hazy images.

"_Sam was…your mom's whitelighter."_

"_He loved her."_

"_I lost the most important thing in my life twenty years ago."_

"_Unspeakable wrath the likes of which you can't even imagine."_

_She ran through the front door and through the foyer, avoiding four-year-old Piper's pots and pans. "Mom, Mom! Guess what!" Grams came rushing to her, instead. "Prudence!" she said. "What have I told you about shouting in this house in the afternoon? Your mother needs her rest." _

_Grams picked them up from the first day of camp at the lake, a cranky Phoebe in tow. "Looks like it's just the four of us tonight, girls. Your mother had something to take care of." Prue didn't see her mom until the next night._

The pieces of whatever puzzle the Source had uncovered floated through Prue's mind. She tried for a desperate moment to fit them together in any way that didn't lead to the obvious answer. But she failed. There was only one explanation. Her mom's affair with her whitelighter Sam had produced a daughter who they had to keep secret--from the Elders and Patty's other daughters. The three future Charmed Ones.

Prue broke out of her musing to the sound of Cole clearing his throat. "It-it's true," she finally managed to say. "She must've been born in early August of 1977. I remember that our mother was tired all that spring, and then gone for about two days straight. They must have given her up."

Cole slowly nodded. "The thought in the demonic rumor mill is that your grandmother bound her powers, at least, her witch's powers. The power to orb apparently can't be stripped that way. Also, she doesn't seem to have been wiccaned."

Confusion came to the fore of Prue's increasingly chaotic emotional state. She stared at Cole. "Wiccaned?"

"Blessed, by the spirits of significant figures in your family line. All infant witches are supposed to receive the blessings, in order to be oriented toward the use of good magic."

She eyed him. "The same family line you went back in time to wipe out. Hm. So what does the Source want with my youngest sister, Cole?"

"Nothing more than normal." He smiled slightly, but explained, "All witches who come into their powers the way you three did -- after puberty because of binding -- are open to what's called the window of opportunity during the first day after their powers are released. The window allows good and evil an equal playing field to sway the witch to their side. Your sister's window looks like it'll start in five days, assuming Piper and Phoebe find her when the Source thinks they will."

Prue took a breath. Always the overachiever, she knew she had absorbed more concentrated, vital information during this bizarre mutual interrogation with Cole than she had in years. There was still so much she hadn't processed yet, so many questions to ask. Part of her felt the rise of the familiar mild anxiety that came over her whenever she didn't feel like she had a certain amount of control over a situation. Another more cynical part of her whispered that by the look of things, she had better get used to the feeling.

"So?" she prompted him.

Cole dropped his hands to his sides. He really hadn't been sure how she'd react to the news, and she was not yet walking well. "So, you can keep your answer of 'no' to the Source's plan. You then die, and the Source will go straight after your half-whitelighter sister during her window of opportunity. He _will_ turn her and she'll become the key to carrying out the prophecy. Piper and Phoebe would be on their own against demonic attack." Prue opened her mouth to say something, anything, in response. But Cole held up a hand, and with a small impatient noise, she let him continue. "If, on the other hand, you agree, then he will make just a token effort during the window. He's got to make the Underworld believe that he'd try to prevent the Charmed Ones from re-forming. But he wouldn't actually turn your other sister or hurt her permanently."

Prue tried to get her head around the choice Cole was presenting her with. "In other words," she thought aloud, "if I refuse, any chance for the Charmed Ones to re-form will be lost. Piper and Phoebe would be vulnerable without the Power of Three. But agreeing …."

"Means they live to fight the good fight for at least one more day," he finished for her.

She looked up at him sharply. It meant so much more than that, of course. _I'll probably never see them again, at least in this lifetime. My three sisters or my father. _She shook her head. Thoughts straight out of a Disney movie didn't help the situation. Prue thought back instead to the days after Phoebe said the incantation unbinding their powers. How confused, shocked, frustrated, and downright scared she had been. How she struggled to come to terms with an entire side of herself that she hadn't known existed, and what it meant for her life. How much she had needed her sisters during that time, even if she didn't admit it to them.

Her youngest sister was about to have similar questions and fears. Through the haze of her current confusion and outrage, two clear thoughts rose to the surface of Prue's mind. She could not let her own sister go through that journey alone. She could not let Piper and Phoebe remain vulnerable, deprived of the re-formed Power of Three.

Prue carefully placed both hands back on the cave wall. She looked at Cole. "Fine. I agree to the Source's plan. But you tell him that he had better keep his promises."

He laughed aloud. "I wouldn't dare tell the Source that he had to do anything he hadn't already decided to do. Such as, normally, keeping promises to a witch who is in no position to argue." He gave her a pointed look. "Lucky for you, he does intend to keep his end of the bargain this time. The prophecy is that important to him." Cole turned to leave the cavern.

"Speaking of the prophecy," she called to his retreating back a moment later, "you didn't tell me how the Source plans for me to become pregnant. Who is supposed to be the father of this all-powerful child? Him?"

Cole turned around, slowly. He pressed his lips together to keep away the smirk that last thought inspired. "No. I am."


	3. Coming to Terms

A/N: Quotes in this chapter are from episodes 1x06, "The Wedding from Hell" and 2x18, "Chick Flick". All are the property of Aaron Spelling, et al. _Rosemary's Baby,_ incidentally, is the property of Paramount Pictures.

Cole left the cavern before Prue had a chance to reply. She couldn't form a coherent response if she wanted to, however. Her hands balled into fists, and she beat them against the wall behind her for several moments. Somehow, it wasn't as satisfying as beating up the Source, or better yet, vanquishing him, but she needed to do something. Anything to avoid the thought of what she had gotten herself into.

Slowly she stopped, drained of what little strength she had. The choice she made stared

her in the face, as real as the stone surrounding her. One sister's life and happiness for another's. Prue shook her head. She really had believed her decision to come to the Underworld had been for the best. Now she didn't know what to think.

A few more minutes passed. Then, through the cavern's entrance, Prue began to hear footsteps and rhythmic chanting. The sound grew louder as the procession got closer to the cave, and Prue could make out bits of the demonic chant. _Videre videnda, _

_Cav_e _Hecate, Vae Victis. _She translated mentally, "See what should be seen, beware Hecate, woe to the conquered._" Beware Hecate._ Prue closed her eyes as memories nearly three years old came back to her. The Spencer wedding. The fertility icon, the dagger and its inscription, her own research, and Piper telling them about the murdered priest who had shouted "She is the bearer of the demon child, beware Hecate!" Prue slumped against the cave wall. The demons were chanting about _her _and the fulfillment of the prophecy_. _

She closed her eyes in despair, but that brought no relief. Instead she remembered when Phoebe told her about the premonition she had had before the Spencer wedding, and her own knee-jerk reaction.

"_And in this vision a …thing was being born. So, I started to think back, oh, six, eight weeks ago…"_

"_Oh my god, you're pregnant … that's why you came back from New York, isn't it?"_

"_No. But I shouldn't be surprised that you would think that. After all, I am the irresponsible sister, the black sheep who always screws up, the dark cloud over the Halliwell household."_

"_Think about it Prue, because it wasn't me in that vision having the demon child…."_

Prue made a half-hearted attempt to convince herself that back then Phoebe tended to jump to conclusions with the limited information her premonitions provided. After all, hadn't she initially thought the woman in the vision was Piper? And besides, the demon posing as "Jade DeMone" had been vanquished. But the nagging thought persisted: what if? Phoebe admitted she never saw the woman's face.

The irony of the situation almost overwhelmed her. If Phoebe could see you now, Prue told herself, she'd call you a hypocrite. Not just based on the similarity with that one incident, of course. Countless times both before and after they'd become the Charmed Ones, Prue had asked for her sisters' trust and support. They had often been reluctant to give it, but in the end they had, almost every time.

But there had been plenty of times when she hadn't completely given them the same trust. Part of her could admit that to herself--heck, part of her had once, aloud. Especially with Phoebe, she had always been a bit more protective. That had only become more true when Cole Turner entered their lives. The role of little mother hen might have been forced on her by circumstances and her grandmother, but she had mostly accepted it because she loved her sisters. She loved them so much it hurt, sometimes. Like it had when Phoebe had decided all on her own to go back to college, and like it did now, as the significance of betraying her this way hit home.

Bile rose up in Prue's throat. She was going have to sleep with Cole Turner and have his demonic child. A demonic child that could very well be unvanquishable, even by the Power of Three, if the Source's judgment of its power held true. She didn't know at this point which part was worse, and she was usually the one who had made these judgment calls. The acid kept coming up, and she quickly doubled over.

A few dry heaves, and then a spurt of acid poured out of her mouth onto the stone floor. She retched again, but nothing else came. Prue took a few deep breaths. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and straightened up. Then she heard a muffled sound from the entrance to the cave. There stood Cole, watching her with an unreadable expression on his face.

"The Source was pleased you agreed, of course," he began. "He expressed amusement at your insistence about the bargain, but I'm supposed to remind you that it isn't necessary for him to target your sisters now that the plan will go forward, so he won't."

Despite her discomfort with what Cole might have seen, Prue couldn't help but raise her eyebrows. "Like that's supposed to be reassuring."

He shrugged. "Take it or leave it." They looked at each other for a moment. Cole looked away first, his eyes drawn down to the small pool of acid. "I guess you weren't kidding during that run-in with the Seeker demons. Tell me something, Prue. Am I really that repulsive to you?"

"What is repulsive to me," she told him through clenched teeth, "is betraying Phoebe. Do you remember her at all? The witch you fell in love with, who also happens to be my sister?"

He nodded. "Yes, I do. But that doesn't change the fact that I have been loyal to the Source and the brotherhood for a hundred years, Prue. Or that it would have been next to impossible for me to live powerless among witches. Raynor and the others helped me to fully understand that." She looked at him, a little astonished. He smiled wryly at her. "Oh, I know what Phoebe came here to do. I also know it wouldn't have worked. As it is, she's lucky you found her before the brotherhood did. But like I told you once before, that's now in the past."

"The past?" she echoed incredulously.

"Yes," he replied. "We need to focus on the present right now, especially letting you get cleaned up and finding something to eat."

Prue started to say something to that, but her stomach _was_ completely empty, and she had been in the same clothes for longer than she wanted to remember. "Fine," she told him.

He led her out of the cavern and through the main corridor she'd heard the procession pass through, before they took a sharp left and went along a narrow passageway. Finally they stopped at a very old wooden door. Cole took out another set of keys and unlocked it. But before he pushed it open he turned to her and said, "Everything behind this door is the result of a spell or a charm. Treat anything you see like the real thing, just remember that."

She nodded, and they entered the chamber. It looked like a penthouse suite, Prue thought immediately. Persian carpets ran into a living area, where two loveseats and two full sized sofas boxed in a glass and wrought iron coffee table. Without another glance at Cole, she walked further into the room. He followed a few steps behind.

"Bathroom's through there. A change of clothes should be with the towels." He pointed to a door on their right. "The kitchen is through here." He indicated around a corner to their left. "I'll see what I can find in there. Probably sandwiches will be best."

Prue nodded toward the door along the wall opposite where they stood. "I'm guessing that leads to the…"

"Bedroom," he finished. They stood looking at each other a moment, before Prue abruptly headed into the bathroom. Cole suppressed a small smile. Then he went into the kitchen.

She didn't even pause to look at herself in the full length mirror or examine the full complement of beauty products. Off went every dusty, dried-blood and vomit-covered piece of clothing. The water felt wonderful when she stepped under it. For two seconds, Prue considered simply keeping her mouth open under the showerhead. At least Barbas had been good for something, she told herself. There would be no betrayal of Phoebe. No actual cooperation with the Source's plot. She'd get to see her mother, Grams, and Andy again. But then she remembered what the consequences would be for the little sister she had never actually met. She still had to prevent the Source from getting to that girl. So she emerged ten minutes later, clean, resolved, and with significantly shorter hair. Long term residence in the Underworld, Prue had decided, probably demanded a lower maintence style.

Cole had set a table for two in a small alcove off the kitchen with sandwiches and a Caesar salad. Prue also noted that a wine glass beside her plate appeared to be filled already. "Ah," Cole declared when he walked into the alcove. "Your hair."

"Is now as short as it was before my sisters and I had ever heard of you," she replied tartly. They sat down. Cole served them both salad, and they ate in silence for several minutes.

"You never directly answered my question," he finally commented. She looked up sharply.

"Phoebe --" she started to remind him.

"Believes that we are both lost to her. She will have no idea."

She sighed in exasperation, and perhaps a bit of desperation. "You just don't get it, do you? _I _will know, and that matters to me."

"Yet here you still are," he told her. "So for the sake of argument, just pretend Phoebe isn't a factor."

"Fine." She pointed her fork at her wine glass. "If that is what I think it is, then you _are_ that repulsive to me, Cole, and your boss too, even more than usual."

He shook his head, chuckling softly. "It's a re-hydration potion, Prue. You really are too suspicious for your own good sometimes."

She glared at him, but the reminder that she was dehydrated served to make her pick up the glass, sniff the liquid, and take a small sip. Then she took another. In a minute she had drained the glass.

"Thank you," she finally said when she set it back down, not looking at him. "I needed that."

Cole simply nodded. "The Source wants you to remain in excellent health. Which is why I'm going to suggest that you head into the bedroom now. I'll join you in a bit. First I need to check on something."

She couldn't deny that she was tired. The reality of her situation again confronted her. Slowly she made her way into the bedroom. A set of pajamas lay on the queen-sized bed, surprising her only a little, and she put them on. Then she got into the bed and stared at the ceiling. She tried to keep her mind blank, but that was impossible. She thought about Phoebe, Piper, and Leo and the grief she knew must be tearing them apart; she thought about the little sister she never knew, and realized that she didn't even know the girl's name. _I'm sorry, _she thought to each of them. _Please know that I never meant to hurt you. _

And then, her thoughts shifted again. She heard Andy's voice in her mind, from the vision she'd had of him before she discovered him dead. "Everything happens for a reason," he'd reminded her. "Remember, you told me that, Prue." Tears welled up in her eyes at the memory, and she furiously blinked them away. _I wished so many things for us, for you, _she thought. _I wished we could've had kids playing in a yard behind a white picket fence. They would have been so beautiful, Andy. So good and noble, just like you. Please forgive me._

Cole came in about fifteen minutes later, having changed already. He got into the bed beside her. Eyeing the tears which she'd begun to let flow freely down her face, he murmured, "A wise witch I loved very much had a favorite movie. I think we both have to take that movie's advice."

She turned toward him. "_Kill it Before it Dies," _she muttered.

Cole nodded. He looked toward the ceiling so she couldn't see the pain in his eyes. "_Kill it Before it Dies."_


	4. Funerary Findings

A/N: As my high school P.E. teacher would say, "Meanwhile, back at the ranch…" A quote in this chapter is from 1x07, "The Fourth Sister".

Phoebe Halliwell had been told several times in her life that she was a dark and complicated soul. As one innocent, a girl who thought the two of them had a lot in common put it, "we aren't pink people, Phoebe". Today though, the one day when she was actually expected to wear black, Phoebe found that she desperately wanted to wear some pink. She wanted, and she needed, a little sign of hope for herself and for Piper. She needed to believe in a light at the end of the tunnel that seemed to stretch in front of her forever. So she tied a light pink scarf around her neck and let the ends drape over the gray fitted ankle length dress she wore to the funeral.

It was simple and blandly neo-pagan, although Phoebe didn't think most of the mourners were paying much attention to the service itself. She knew her father and Piper definitely weren't. Phoebe had been worried about Piper ever since they'd discovered Prue's body in the conservatory. Her grief and desperation had been all-consuming. She spent probably half the night before the funeral in the attic with the Book of Shadows, casting every spell she could think of to summon Prue's spirit or bring their sister back body and soul.

At four AM, Phoebe walked in on Piper casting the blood-to-blood spell to call a lost witch, and she was convinced that if she hadn't stopped her, Piper might have opened her wrists to give the spell more power. Yes, Piper scared her right now. But at least Piper had Leo; Phoebe watched her sister cry on her husband's shoulder all through the service, and a part of her she'd tried to ignore wished she had Cole's shoulder for herself. She made do with a single handkerchief and sympathetic pats on the back from Darryl Morris.

Neither Piper nor Phoebe noticed the gangly girl in a short dress who slipped into the chapel after the service started. She sat quietly in the back row and watched everything and everyone in front of her. When the service ended, the girl paused on her way out and then approached Phoebe, who was standing off by herself. "I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss," the girl said, extending her hand.

Startled, Phoebe managed a "thank you" before she asked, "How did you know Prue?"

They touched palms as the girl muttered, "Um, just from around," and Phoebe flashed into a vision. _A rooftop downtown at night. The girl and some guy embracing and talking. Then Shax attacking from behind._ Phoebe's head spun, and she barely let go of the girl's hand before she collapsed against the carpeted steps to the sanctuary. The girl, freaked, turned and ran out of the chapel. Leo and Darryl rushed over to help Phoebe up.

"That-that girl," Phoebe gasped. "She's going to be attacked by Shax." Leo quickly steered Phoebe into the front of the chapel, where Piper had escaped when the service ended. "Piper," Phoebe said. Piper turned, and the two of them could see how red-rimmed from crying her eyes were. "Piper, I need to go after that girl to protect her. _We _need to. Shax will attack her."

Piper shook her head, nearly hysterical. "No. No! Phoebe, this is Prue's funeral. Nothing, I mean _nothing, _from our former Charmed lives is going to mess with today. I-I won't let it."

Phoebe put a hand on each of Piper's shoulders, and looked her in the eyes. "I have to do this, Piper. This girl's life is in danger, I know it. How can we just turn away from that?"

Piper pressed her lips together, trying to keep her composure. "We aren't the Charmed Ones anymore. That's how."

"I don't believe that's it," Phoebe replied softly. Her hands dropped to her sides. "I got that premonition, and I'm not going to just ignore it." She turned to Leo for help. "I have to do this, don't I?"

Slowly Leo nodded. "If you got a premonition, then I think both of you must still have your powers." He glanced at Piper. "If you still have your powers, then you still have an obligation to use them to protect the innocent."

Phoebe nodded decisively to the middle distance between her sister and her brother-in-law. "Then that's what I'm going to do. I'll go on my own if I have to, Piper."

Leo looked at Piper. He never liked to get between the sisters, but as their guide and protector, he would now if he had to. "Honey, I know --" he started to say, but Piper cut him off.

"No, Leo, you don't. I'm sorry, but no. Whatever _destiny_ we're supposed to fulfill died when Prue did. She isn't even buried yet, and you two want me to go out on some wild goose chase?" Piper's voice was thick with the effort of holding back tears.

Phoebe held out her hands, half in potential defense and half in case her sister needed a hug. "Piper, I know, okay? I do. I'm hurting too. But think what Prue would want us to do."

Piper glared at them both for a full minute. Phoebe and Leo braced themselves for another round. Gradually they realized that she wasn't seeing them. She was lost in thought. Finally, she nodded at them.

They left the chapel two hours later, after Prue's casket was placed in the modern mausoleum. Phoebe's best guess on the location of her premonition was a rooftop near the TransAmerica building. About forty-five minutes after they settled in with two pairs of binoculars to watch from an old multistory warehouse across the street, the girl from the chapel showed up with the guy Phoebe foresaw. Five minutes later, they watched a mini tornado form on the rooftop. Both the girl and the guy ran, but Shax was faster. The guy fell, and Shax gained on the girl. Then with Piper, Phoebe and Leo watching, the girl orbed in place, and Shax, startled, blew away. Frightened again, the girl ran into the building's stairwell. Piper and Phoebe turned to Leo. "Wait. She's a whitelighter?" Phoebe asked. "Why would I get a premonition about Shax attacking a whitelighter? Leo, what's going on?"

Leo shook his head. "I don't know. She looked like she didn't expect to orb, either. That doesn't make sense. I'll go ask the Elders what they know." He ducked away from the window and orbed out. A few moments passed in the warm spring evening before he returned. "The Elders have no idea who she is," he told them.

"Well," Piper spoke up. "Looks like she's safe for now, whoever she is. Shax disappeared. I think we should go home and deal with the wake." She walked toward the warehouse's stairwell, before turning back to Phoebe and Leo. "Are you two coming? There's nothing more to see here."

Phoebe and Leo glanced at each and shrugged. She did have a point.

They returned to the Manor and somehow got through most of the wake. Phoebe tried to shield Piper from some of the more intrusive mourners. About an hour after they returned, Piper escaped to the attic. When the guests started to drift toward the door, giving their final condolences, Phoebe slipped upstairs after her.

Piper stood looking out the attic window. The Book of Shadows was open on the lectern, and Phoebe went to close it while she tried to figure out something to say. When she touched the face-down front cover, however, she flashed into another vision. _The same girl from the rooftop, seated at a table. She was doodling the shape of a triquetra on a cocktail napkin. A napkin with "P3" on one corner. _Phoebe came out of this vision shaking, but she clutched at the lectern and remained standing.

"Piper," she said. "I saw the girl again. I think she was or will be at P3. She knows about the triquetra. I think she knows _us._"

Piper turned to her, and seemed to be trying to decide whether to respond. She glanced at the cover of the Book of Shadows. Phoebe looked down at it, too. The triquetra hadn't separated. They looked at each other. Then Piper said simply, "Okay. Let's go to P3."

It was ten o'clock by the time they reached the nightclub. Phoebe sat at the bar, while Piper gave the bouncers a head's up to watch for a girl who looked like the one they had seen attacked, and her date. But she needn't have bothered, because the girl came in right after Piper came back over to Phoebe.

"That's her," Phoebe said to Piper out of the corner of her mouth. "Dark brown hair, high cheekbones, very fair complexion, the greenish miniskirt. What do we do?"

Piper looked around the bar quickly. Her practicality asserted itself through her grief. "Drink order. Then try to get her alone so you can ask about what she knows. Vamp the guy, I'll handle it from there."

Phoebe made her way over to where the girl and the same guy were seated, notepad in hand. "Hey, what can we start you out with?"

The girl looked up, startled to see Phoebe and not a regular waitress. "I'll…just have mineral water. Um. Shane?" She turned to her date.

"Bud Lite," the guy said to Phoebe. She wrote that down, then said to the guy, "Do you have a silver '98 Honda Civic with California plates? 'Cuz security just told me it's double parked in the red and like two minutes from getting cited." The guy blanched, and Phoebe had chew her lip to keep from laughing as he bolted out the door. She shared a small knowing smirk with the girl before she returned to the bar.

"Guy's out of the way for at least as long as security can give him the run around, good thinking there," Phoebe reported to Piper _sotto voce_. "And our orbing, occult symbol drawing innocent ordered mineral water. Stay tuned for the complete story." Piper managed a weak smile as Phoebe headed back over to the girl's table.

"Hi again," she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. Sure enough, the girl had begun to doodle a triquetra on one of the napkins. "Now that's an interesting symbol. You must be really good to be able to draw it from memory just like that."

The girl looked at Phoebe, who was afraid for a moment that she'd startled the innocent again. Then she said quietly, "I've drawn this shape ever since I could draw. It always just made sense to me. I don't really know why."

Phoebe, encouraged that the girl didn't seem to mind her company that much, dropped her voice so it matched the girl's in volume. "Do you know anything about it, like what it means? Or the meanings of any other symbols?"

The girl shook her head. Phoebe added thoughtfully, "My sister's funeral was chalk full of symbols. Lots of them were about death and new life, obviously."

Her eyes widening, the girl said quickly, "Are you okay? I'm so sorry about whatever I did." She rolled her eyes in self-deprecation. "I can be such a klutz, but it usually doesn't make people faint. That would be a new low, even for me."

Phoebe couldn't fully keep back a tiny grin. "No, I'm okay," she reassured the girl. "My other sister Piper and I are just kind of curious about why you were at Prue's funeral, that's all."

"Oh." The girl looked down at her lap and fidgeted with her hands. After a minute she said, "Okay. I didn't want to say anything. I didn't know how to, or even what to say. There's a lot I still don't get." She paused.

"But?" Phoebe prompted.

"But," the girl muttered, still looking half at her hands and half at Phoebe's. "I can't explain exactly why I came to the funeral, but um, I'm adopted. I started to search for my birth mother about a year ago. According to my birth certificate, her name was Patricia Halliwell."


	5. The Bride of Belthazor

A/N: Quotes in this chapter come from episodes 3x09, "Coyote Piper", 3x13, "Bride and Gloom, 3x17, "Pre-witched", and 4x19, "We're Off to See the Wizard". Also, with some apologies to Margaret Atwood.

Cole didn't touch her that first night, and while Prue was relieved and grateful for the chance to get some sleep, she was also puzzled. She'd been under the impression that time was a factor in the fulfillment of this prophecy, or at least in how the Source viewed it.

She didn't have to wait long for her question to be answered, though. Cole was gone when she woke up, and there was a note on the nightstand advising her to be up and ready for "an event" by the time he returned. That put her on edge, but there wasn't much she could do besides shower, dress, and eat the breakfast which had been neatly laid out.

He entered the kitchen just as she finished. "Well, today should be a memorable day," he said as he sat down.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Memorable how, Cole?"

He looked her straight in the eye and folded his hands in front of him on the table. "It's our wedding day, Prue. You didn't seriously think the Source was going to let the twice blessed child be conceived out of wedlock, did you?"

Through her astonishment and rising dread, Prue managed to retort, "Oh? And why not? Wouldn't that help it to become evil, according to whatever karmic logic he's basing all this on?"

Cole smirked at her and shook his head. "Not really. There wouldn't be enough black magic influencing the pregnancy. And remember, he doesn't just want the child."

She raised her chin. "He wants me."

He nodded. "So we should get going. But first, I have something for you." He motioned for her to follow him to the large mirror outside the bathroom, where he took a small box out of a pouch. She raised an eyebrow when Cole opened the box. Inside was a thin silver chain necklace with a blood red ruby embedded in the brooch.

Putting the box on a small end table next to the mirror, he said, "In lieu of a ring. Here, face the mirror and I'll…" he gestured with the necklace. She kept her eyebrows raised but turned obligingly. Cole raised the necklace over her head and brushed her now shorter hair to the side with one hand. He clasped it loosely enough that the brooch fell just below her collarbone.

Even while, despite herself, she admired the look of the necklace, Prue noted that Cole's hands hadn't left her shoulders. They both stood looking at the reflection. After a moment, he murmured against her hair, "So it is true. Every bride is beautiful on her wedding day."

Prue stiffened, and said through clenched teeth, "Every _conscious, non-paralyzed _bride, maybe. Every bride who knows what's going to happen next. Since when did you start quoting Dantalian, anyway?" She kept her eyes on the mirror.

Without missing a beat, he answered, "Since the Source told me he was going to improve on her scheme. Since I realized how ironic this whole situation is. Did Phoebe ever tell you how she and Piper finally found you? How she came looking for me at the mausoleum? I was the one who discovered what Dantalian had done, Prue."

She stepped out of the reach of his arms before turning to face him. "So you want credit for what, saving me? Not a chance. Although that does remind me of something I've been wondering. What do you get out of this, Cole? Why go along with the plan of someone who put a price on your head? Especially when you'd betray Phoebe in the process?"

Looking away from the mirror at last, he rolled his eyes. "There's the easy, party line answer to that, or the one that might be difficult to understand."

She stared at him, a little surprised by his frankness. Never one to back down from a challenge, she said, "Try me."

Cole sighed. "I told Phoebe once that I'd believed my humanity had died before I met her. Whatever good I was capable of comes from that side of me. From my human father. You can choose to believe this or not, but I could never hate him, Prue. I never resented who he was, or that he made me less demonic. I just wanted him to be able to rest in peace. Even now, this idea that he can have a grandchild who will be partially human…to give him that, I don't care that the Source is using me."

Prue stood gazing at him. She knew that she needed to adjust her instinctual reactions if she was going to survive in the Underworld, but at that moment, she said the first thing on her mind. "Whatever the cost? To me, to Phoebe? If I had refused, to my youngest sister?"

He looked over her shoulder at the reflection of her back. "To Paige Mathews."

She blinked and then narrowed her eyes. "Who?"

Cole finally met her eyes again. "That's your sister's name, according to the spies the Source has trailing her. They saw her meet Phoebe and Piper, and they guess it'll be less than seventy-two hours, max, before the Charmed Ones are reconstituted." He took her hands in his. "So now that you know who I'm doing this for, and who exactly you're protecting, we have a wedding to get to."

Numbly, she nodded. He led her out of their suite and through the passageway in the opposite direction from the way they'd come before, until they came to a wide chamber with several niches in each of its stone walls. A candle occupied each niche. An altar stood at the head of the chamber, opposite the entrance, and a squat, rat-faced demon stood behind it. A smaller altar was off to one side, with a silver goblet on it. The demon was dressed in shabby gray vestments. Prue guessed that he must be a dark priest. He looked up from reading a large book on the altar when they entered.

"Ah, Belthazor, you are right on time. And your bride is as lovely as she was rumored to be. My name is Esalton, my dear. You will need to remember that for the ceremony. Come, stand in front of the altar, here, and we will begin."

One thought repeated itself over and over in Prue's mind while the priest positioned her and Cole just so, covered her face with a sheer black veil, turned a few pages in the book, and set a coil of twine and an athame on the altar. _The bride of Belthazor. She, Prue Halliwell, was the bride of Belthazor. _She didn't know if she should laugh or cry at the thought, but she was grateful that it kept the other, sober thoughts and emotions at bay. Looking at the whole situation as a farce was much easier, and that's what she tried to do when Esalton started to chant softly in Latin, until she noticed that he wasn't anymore.

"Lewilah: Nerraw, Adnilem, Ecnedurp, Aicirtap," it now sounded like he was saying. He took hold of her left hand. With a start, Prue realized the priest was chanting names on her family tree -- backwards, the way Abraxas had read the Book of Shadows. And somehow, she felt the effect of that, deep in her heart. Coolness settled there, and she began to be more interested in the ceremony. Cole nodded at her when their eyes met before shifting his gaze back to the altar and the book.

A few moments later Esalton stopped his reversed chanting. He took the twine and the athame from the altar over to the side table. Sprinkling a golden liquid from the goblet on both the athame and the twine, he murmured, "What was once separate shall now be joined by not only my powers, but their own. _Malus entu exitis omne." _Then he handed the athame and one end of the twine to Cole, keeping hold of the other end and placing the goblet on the main altar.

Cole turned to Prue and said, "Give me your right hand," which she immediately did. He turned it palm up, took the athame, and cut a jagged line across it. She winced. While the cut started to bleed, he did the same with his left palm. Then he pressed them together, and he and Esalton together wound the twine around the two hands.

Then the priest turned to Prue. "Repeat after me, my dear: I, Prudence Halliwell, pledge to you, Belthazor, that I renounce family, all good magic, and the charitable protection of the ancients to give myself to you in mind, soul, and body. I stand before you, with the priest Esalton as our witness, ready to be your helpmate and aid in joint and loyal service to the Source of all Evil. "

Without blinking, Prue repeated the vow. Then Esalton said to Cole, "Your vow is as follows: "I, Belthazor, declare to you, Prudence Halliwell, that I renounce all other women before you and give myself to you fully, in mind, soul, and body. I stand before you, as Esalton is our witness, ready to be your partner and aid in loyal, joint service of the Source of all Evil." Cole took a slight breath and repeated the vow. The priest took their clasped, entwined hands in his and had them chant once, "_Malus entu exitis omne." _He released their hands and lifted Prue's veil. Then he handed the goblet to Cole, who drank from it and passed it to Prue. She drank the golden liquid without hesitation, and let the coolness wash over her.

"_Malus entu exitis omne,"_ they all chanted three times more. Esalton then held up their clasped hands and said, "Thou art bound to each other in matrimony and service from this day on."

The rest of Prue's second wedding day passed in a hazy blur. She could sometimes hear echoes of her sisters' voices in her mind, and they seemed to be calling out to her. But then other memories would surface, and she would be left confused. She thought about her wedding, and remembered planning for the one that never happened. Cole seemed to be giving her a lot of space; he appeared to have known that this wedding ceremony, like the one Dantalian performed, wouldn't produce an instantaneous transformation.

But she knew her memories and thoughts were slowly shifting; things she hadn't thought about in years or realized before now were clear as crystal in her mind's eye. One memory in particular.

_She and her sisters stood in front of the Manor, back when Grams was ill. She and Phoebe were bickering back and forth about Roger._

"_Can we please get this over with?" Phoebe had almost whined. _

"_Why, you got plans? Anyone that I know?"_

"_I'm just trying to be nice to the guy considering he's gonna be part of this family soon…and why would I spend my time on a wimp who's got mother issues?"_

"_I don't know," Prue had retorted, "but why should I believe anything that you say?"_

Somehow it took awhile for her mind to move past that response, with everything it had implied about what she had thought of Phoebe back then, to any of her other thoughts. Gradually it was harder to remember how proud she was of Phoebe now, what she admired about her, or that she missed her sisters at all. She also realized, with not only horror but morbid curiosity, that she had probably come close to telekinetically choking Roger to death when she'd quit the museum. A small voice in her mind whispered that he had gotten what he deserved.

She recoiled instantly from that voice, though. A reassuring warmth of righteous indignation swept through her -- she was a good witch, and she wasn't supposed to punish the guilty. Phoebe, of all people, had reminded her of that. Phoebe, her brave baby sister, who understood her and pushed her to be better like no one else had, and in the process taught her so much about life and love. Prue clung to that thought as the day came to a close. She sat on one of the sofas in the suite's living room, lost in thought, when Cole came toward her from the direction of the bedroom. Prue looked up at him. Wordlessly, he held out his hand, and she took it.

He led her into the bedroom. Methodically, she undressed, and so did he. She lay down on the bed, thinking how much she wanted this 'memorable day' to be over. A moment later, she watched him kneel beside her. "Well," he whispered, reaching out to run his thumb along her jaw line, "here we are."

Prue didn't reply right away. Her thoughts were still with her sisters, especially Phoebe. _Oh, Phoebe, _she pleaded silently, _please forgive me for what I'm about to do._


	6. Secrets Unsealed

A/N: I've decided that the focus will shift back and forth from Prue/Cole to the other Halliwells in alternating chapters. So for example, this chapter will focus on Phoebe, Paige and Piper, and we'll catch up with Prue and Cole in the next chapter before returning to the Manor and P3 again. But these "family-focused" chapters are necessary to understanding the whole plot, so please don't skip them or you'll be lost soon. Enjoy!

Not much in this world or the next was capable of rendering Phoebe Halliwell speechless. But those five words from this jumpy girl just about did the trick. She stood there gaping like a fish for a full minute, until the girl started to freak out again. "I-I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry. I don't know why I even went to the funeral. I'll just get out of here, and leave you and your sister alone." She started to get up, and the movement startled Phoebe out of her shocked silence.

"No, wait. Sit down and just let me get my head around what you're telling me." Phoebe waved emphatically at the chair the girl had jumped up from. Still looking very uneasy, the girl sank back down into the seat. Phoebe leaned back, covering her face with her hands. She counted to twenty. Slowly she lowered her arms until her elbows rested on the sticky tabletop and her palms cradled her chin. "Okay. Let's try this again. What's your name, first of all?"

The girl looked at Phoebe for a few seconds. "Paige Mathews," she finally said.

Phoebe nodded, smiling weakly. "Well, Paige, I'm Phoebe. That's Piper over there at the bar." Phoebe turned and gave Piper the tiny secret wave the sisters had made up when Phoebe started kindergarten. It meant: I'm okay right now, but stay close and be ready to come running. Since becoming witches they'd gotten a lot more mileage out of that and the many other little signals they shared.

Paige fiddled with the napkin she'd been doodling on. "I, uh, knew that. I mean, I've been coming to P3 for about a year now, and she is the owner and all."

Phoebe zeroed in on the new bit of information. Anything to keep the girl calm and talking. "A year? Then I guess you would know who we are by now, huh?" She laughed lightly. "So, uh, please don't take this the wrong way, but it's not every day you meet someone claiming to be a lost relative, you know?"

Paige nodded in understanding. Part of her still couldn't believe that she had been "outed" by the sisters. How had they known she'd come back to the club? Her own curiosity about that and the million other questions about the women she'd imagined from afar to be her family kept her seated. When Phoebe next spoke Paige was almost paralyzed in place.

"I want to believe you're telling me the truth. I mean, I believe that _you _believe you're telling the truth. It's just that knowing my family history, I don't really see how it's possible for, well, for our mother to be your birth mother. Um, could I ask what your date of birth is? That might help --"

"August 2, 1977," Paige broke in. When Phoebe just stared at her, closed mouthed, she continued as if reciting from memory. "Place of birth: Unknown locale in the County of San Francisco. Along with the name "Patricia Halliwell", that's all the relevant info I got from my birth certificate."

Phoebe shook her head. Again she took a breath while her mind worked furiously to figure out what, if anything, this information might mean. The date made sense; it fell right in the middle of what Phoebe suddenly realized _would_ be an over two year long window between her own birth in November 1975 and her mom's death at the end of February 1978. But that still left three major issues with the girl's story that Phoebe could think of off the top of her increasingly confused head.

"Huh," she said to Paige. "That actually fits, um, I mean, within the timeline of my mom's life. I guess you probably know she died over twenty years ago."

Paige bit her lip as she nodded. "That's one of the reasons I didn't approach you and your sisters. But I didn't know her exact date of death, and I couldn't find a copy of her death certificate no matter where I looked or who I asked for favors." At Phoebe's astonished look, she quickly added, "I work at a social services agency, and the different departments have routine access to those types of records. Not that we're supposed to request any for personal research," she gave Phoebe a sly look, "but the mail boy and I are pals."

Phoebe had to bite her own lip to keep back a laugh. She liked this Paige Mathews more by the minute, and she found herself wishing that somehow her fantastic claim was true. But still the major questions needed to be asked and answered.

"I see. Well, since you're curious, and you definitely don't seem like the type to do anything horrible with this info, I'll just tell you. My mom died on February 28, 1978. She," Phoebe had pause and swallow a small lump in her throat as the memory of a vision she received two years before came back to her, "drowned, at this lake where my sisters went to camp the summer before. There was press coverage, and I guess the camp wanted to stop the publicity. I don't really know. Maybe her death certificate was kept out of the public record because of that, or maybe the police pulled it. Her death was the last in a whole string of drownings there, and the camp had to close. "

Paige's mouth quirked. Now who sounds like the evasive one, she asked herself. But she was glad that the timing did fit, after all. "So maybe it is possible that she is my birth mother?"

Glad to get back to what passed for a safer topic in this unusual conversation, Phoebe made a small noise of protesting disbelief. "Timeline wise, yeah, I guess it is possible. But there are a couple other issues involved. One is that my parents separated just after my mom got pregnant with me. They divorced before I was six months old and my dad moved out of state." She looked at Paige intently. "I think you can see where I'm going with this."

Paige tried not to flinch away from the look. "You're saying she must have had an affair or something in order to have had me."

"Or something," Phoebe echoed, her gaze never losing its intensity. "And again, no offense, you're a nice person and I know you're just looking for your roots or whatever, but this is my mother we're talking about."

Paige leaned forward over the table. "Oh, no, I understand. If anyone came up to me and suggested that my adopted mom had done something like that that I had never even known about, I'd be upset too. I didn't mean to say anything bad about her. I just hoped, you know?"

Phoebe's look softened at the girl's earnest sincerity. "I do know. When I was younger I wanted nothing more than to have one day more with her. But then I realized as I grew up that wasn't going to happen. I kind of settled for hearing my sisters tell their memories of her over and over."

Paige shifted in her seat at the mention of both of the older Halliwells. To try and keep the conversation away from any more talk about her actions at the funeral, she said softly, "You said there were a couple reasons. What were the others?"

"Well," Phoebe replied, sounding glad to move on, "After our mom died our grandmother raised us on her own, and one thing she would always tell me whenever I asked about when I was born was that my mom had a difficult labor with me. Like she and I nearly died, difficult. So, I just don't know about the idea of her getting pregnant again after that. I mean, either physically or emotionally it must have been rough. That's one other reason. The third is why would she give you up?"

Paige didn't know how to answer that question, and she didn't have a good response to the rest of what Phoebe said, either. She'd known that this was a long shot, that adoption records weren't always accurate, especially in an abandonment case like hers, and that there was no substitute in any record for the kind of personal, relevant knowledge she was getting from Phoebe. But it hurt all the same to see her little dream weighed down into the dust by cold hard logic.

Phoebe, for her part, watched Paige closely and was somewhat relieved to see her struggling to reconcile what she'd already heard. Magic and how _it _complicated the whole scenario probably wouldn't have to even be mentioned. She believed that was the only way to go right now. If Paige was wrong, then she was better off in blissful mortal ignorance. If the story held up, she and Piper could decide when and how to break that news. After they got some magical answers of their own, of course. Which reminded Phoebe that she owed her sister and brother-in-law an update.

"So," she said to Paige, "I should go back over and tell Piper what you've told me. And I think I should do it myself. She's had a long day, like we all have. But please just stay put, okay?" She gave Paige a quirked smile. After Paige matched it with a sheepish one of her own, Phoebe got up and returned to Piper and Leo at the bar.

To Phoebe's joyful astonishment, Piper remarked without a trace of long suffering or bitter sarcasm, "Seems like you were talking to that girl all night, Pheebs. What's her story, anyway?" She bent below the counter to re-stack a glass she'd been drying.

Phoebe sat down on a barstool and then leaned over the bar to take the rag cloth out of Piper's hand. When Piper protested, she replied, "Trust me, you're going to want to pay complete attention to what I have to tell you."

Piper straightened up. "Okay, well you've got it."

Putting her hands palms down on the bar counter, Phoebe said in a rush, "That girl, her name's Paige Mathews, and she says she's been coming to P3 for a year, she's adopted, she started looking for her birth mother, and Mom's name is the one listed on her birth certificate."

In the next few seconds, Phoebe was dimly aware of being glad that Piper had put away that glass and being not so glad there weren't many chairs behind P3's bar. Piper gripped the edge of the bar counter so tightly her knuckles were white. She said in a strained voice, "_Our _mother's name is on some innocent's birth certificate?! What, why, _how _is that possible? Leo?" Still holding onto the counter, she turned to her husband for an answer.

Leo, unnoticed by the sisters, had gone pale at Phoebe's news. More so than either of them, he'd remained confused about why the Elders hadn't known about the innocent and her ability to orb. Not to mention why exactly Phoebe had gotten the premonitions in the first place. Now, hearing Phoebe reveal the girl's claim, along with her P-initial name and the other details, he began to put two and two together. "Piper, I do think it's possible," he said softly, with as much calm as he could manage under the circumstances.

"How, Leo? How does that make any sense at all?" Piper's voice had regained the pleading note of desperation from the wake. In an effort to soothe her nerves, Leo took his wife's hands in his.

Using his most supportive whitelighter-husband tone, he replied, "Think about your mom, honey, and everything you've learned about her since you got your powers back. You had no idea she was a witch, remember telling me that? And then a year later at the lake you discovered the letters she had written to Sam, and what they had had together. What _we _saw it was possible to have together."

Phoebe had stepped back a bit to let Leo try and reach out to Piper while her sister took in what Phoebe had learned. But when she heard Leo refer to the letters and to Sam, Phoebe reached forward for the bar counter in a shock of remembering, realization and further disbelief. "Mom had an affair with her whitelighter," she murmured. "Mom had an affair with her whitelighter. And-and after she and dad split up," she looked almost wildly at Piper and Leo, "Somehow she got pregnant. I'm still not sure on the how, Piper, but _somehow, _okay_? _You two know better than anyone what the Elders thought of witches and whitelighters being together, so there's that. But it wasn't only that, was it?"

She looked at Leo for confirmation of her unvoiced theory. He nodded at her, avoiding Piper's blank look. Phoebe, bursting with the revelation again, spelled it out for her. "That wasn't the only problem for Mom. She was already the mother of the Charmed Ones, right? It's 'we sisters three', not four. So, they have this relationship that wasn't allowed, and then a pregnancy that threatened _us,_ our birthright as the future Charmed Ones. But we're good witches, so she gave up the baby for adoption. She just had to do it in secret."

"That does make sense," Piper finally said in a small voice.

Leo spoke up. "It's really the only explanation that fits the facts, the girl's story, and what we know about your mom, Piper. I think it's the truth."

"So do I," Phoebe agreed. "Which means I owe her an apology." To their quizzical looks she explained sheepishly, "I kind of maybe implied that she was deliberately insulting Mom by suggesting she must have had an affair, or worse, to have had Paige."

"_Phoebe," _Piper admonished.

"I know, I know! Look at me, going to apologize!" Phoebe hurried back over to Paige's table. Piper turned to her husband in dazed wonder.

"I have another sister, Leo. We buried Prue, and now we discover we've got another sister. Why are we learning this now, if it had to be such a big secret?"

Leo gave Piper's hands a reassuring squeeze. "I think," he told her, "it's so that the Charmed Ones can be re-formed."


	7. Servants of the Source

A/N: Back with Prue/Cole. Quotes in this chapter come from episodes 1x03, "Thank You for Not Morphing", 1x16, "Which Prue is It, Anyway?", and 2x09, "Ms. Hellfire". Most of this chapter is italicized: first dreams, then a flashback.

Prue couldn't have stopped the dreams if she'd wanted to. Memories, images, words all jumbled together. She wasn't sure where one dream ended and the next began as she tossed and turned.

_Glaring at her father when she'd seen him for the first time since she was a little girl. "I'm nothing like you. I would never abandon my responsibilities to my family." _

_Phoebe, stone faced in betrayal. "You hypocrite."_

_Piper staring in disbelief at her clone in the kitchen at Quake. "What has gotten into you? _Who _has gotten into you? Because you're nothing like the real Prue."_

"_Actually, I'm exactly like the real Prue. Just a side that doesn't get to come out and play enough."_

_Phoebe again, with angry tears in her eyes. "I looked up to you. How could you do this to me?"_

_Piper trying to talk her out of impersonating Ms. Hellfire. "Is it just me, or are you a little too eager to play this role?"_

_And Phoebe. "I taught you how to French kiss." Her eyes are desperate, like they were on the rooftop that night. How close had she been to killing them?_

That thought jolted her awake, and the first thing she felt were Cole's arms around her. She remembered the previous night, and the wave of coolness washed over her. Prue laid her head down again. Cole, behind her, stirred awake. "Prue?"

"It's nothing," she muttered, twisting a little in his arms.

"You've been squirming around like an eel," he replied. "That doesn't sound like 'nothing.' And trust me, it doesn't feel like nothing, either." He tried to keep a straight face when he said that, but Prue narrowed her eyes anyway. After those dreams, she didn't want to be reminded of the effect she might have on him. "All I meant," he added, loosening his hold around her a little, "is that if you want to talk about it, I _am_ here."

"You? You want to listen to me talk about my dreams." She didn't actually laugh, but the slight derisive shake of her head was clear enough.

"If it will help you, and therefore me, sleep in peace, then yes, I do."

Prue sighed. She was silent for a few moments, trying to decide where to begin. "I hear them," she finally said. "Piper and Phoebe, calling out to me. Like they're standing in judgment." Prue blinked, and closed her mouth, surprised that she had revealed that much.

Cole nodded, unsurprised. "It's normal for mortals or witches who've turned to focus on what they imagine the reactions of those closest to them would be. But in your case," he brought a hand up and cupped her cheek, "in _our _case, they've already reacted. They mourned us, they buried you, and now they're moving on."

Prue closed her eyes for a moment. When she looked at him again, Cole could see the edge of fear in them. "It still doesn't make up for it. What they would say if they knew what was happening to me?"

"A better question, I think, is why their opinions should matter to you so much," he responded silkily. "You are _dead_ to them, Prue. Just like I am. And did their opinions even matter to you this much before?

The knee-jerk loyal retort turned sour in her mouth. The feeling of coolness came over her again, and after a moment she shook her head at him. "No, they didn't."

"So," he continued, letting his thumb caress her face, "try not to think about what you gave up. Because you already did give it up. Think about what you're gaining." Cole placed his other hand on her abdomen. Prue raised her eyebrows at him, and he bit back a secret smile when he saw her bravado returning. She looked at him steadily for a few moments before she spoke.

"Kind of sure of yourself, don't you think? I mean, I knew demons were arrogant, but really, Cole. I don't think even you are _that_ powerful."

"Well," he said, dropping his hands from her body and glancing over her shoulder at a point on the bedroom's far wall, "Much as I'd like to keep you here and prove you wrong, it's later than either of us thought. And we have a very important meeting to attend."

Prue's eyes narrowed again. "_What_ meeting?"

Cole was already half way off the bed before he answered. "Our audience with the Source."

She could have sworn she caught a glimpse of his hands shaking as they dressed and headed out into the passageway.

When they were ushered into the large chamber that Cole had whispered to her was the Source's inner sanctum, Prue didn't see the hooded figure she'd seen before she lost consciousness. Instead she saw a bald, skull-white demon, with markings on the one fully formed side of its face. He stood on a raised dais on the far side of the chamber. Seconds after they entered, he turned his black marble eyes on them in a swish of thick robes.

Prue involuntarily took a step backward. The Source laughed. "So you _do _recognize me in my true form, witch. With the correct response, as well. Very good. Belthazor may finally be living up to his once impressive reputation." Cole coughed slightly. The Source turned his eyes toward him. "I assume, Belthazor, that you have bedded the witch?"

Prue almost stepped forward again, but Cole reached out and grabbed her arm. In an even voice he answered, "Yes, my lord."

The Source eyed Prue with renewed interest. His glaze settled for a moment on her abdomen, before it rose to her chest and finally to her face, where it became a sneer. She willed herself to meet his appraisal unflinchingly. But she had to bite her lip hard in order to keep still when he continued, "Well, it seems your loins have found their true mark and actually proved useful in the process, wouldn't you say, Belthazor?"

Cole's response was automatic and humble. "Yes, my lord." Prue prepared to be disgusted at both of them all over again, until she felt Cole squeeze lightly on her arm.

The Source smiled his Cheshire smile, and turned once more to Prue. "Well, witch. You should be honored, and grateful. I gave you not only your life, but the opportunity of several lifetimes. The opportunity to bear the most powerful being magic will ever know. You are grateful, are you not?" The glint of challenge shown in those black marble eyes.

Only the pressure of Cole's hand on her arm kept her from leaping at the Source and spitting in his face. She set her jaw as Cole whispered against her ear, "He wants you to bow." She started to retort _sotto voce _when she felt the coolness seep into her veins. Slowly, never taking her eyes off the Source, Prue pulled away from Cole's grasp and bent at the waist toward the dais.

"Thank you, my lord," she murmured, rising again. The Source's smile deepened. He turned and beckoned towards the entrance to his chamber. "Seer!" he called. A stately looking demon entered. She was dressed in red robes, and her ornate gold earrings dangled against her rich brown skin. She looked Prue over with curiosity and much the same appraisal the Source had before turning to her master.

"Seer," the Source addressed the demon, "Here is a Charmed One, just as you foresaw. One filled with demonic seed," his eyes darted briefly to Cole, who coughed again, "just as you foresaw. Now, Seer, I command that you take this witch into your lair and determine for me whether the prophecy has already come to pass."

The Seer bowed to the Source. "Of course, my lord." She stepped toward Prue and took her hand. "Come with me." Cole watched the Seer lead her out of the chamber.

The Source's sneering voice drew his attention back to the situation at hand. "Not growing weak again are you? Remember what I know, Belthazor."

Cole closed his eyes, barely whispering another "Yes, my lord." He remembered that the Source knew about his relationship with Phoebe, all right. The thought haunted _his _dreams, and so did the memory of the Source's threat.

_He had been with members of the Brotherhood in one of their chambers, completing yet another ritual to banish Phoebe from his heart. The circle of chanting demons fell silent when Raynor entered and spoke to him. "The Source wants to see you, Belthazor." _

_He stood tall in the Source's presence, until the ruler of the Underworld said, "I know about you and the witch."_

_Cole had hurried to explain, pointing out what Raynor had done, and what Phoebe thought of him now. The Source became deadly quiet, and then said, "Well, Belthazor, in that case you should have no _objection_," he drew out the word mockingly, "to the assignment I wish to give you now."_

_Nodding almost too eagerly, he replied, "Anything, my lord. Simply name the target."_

_The Source's sneer grew feral as he answered, "Prudence Halliwell." _

_Cole struggled to hear the details of Phoebe's trip to the Underworld, how Prue had come after her before going to the Source, and the rest over the pounding rush of blood in his ears. Only after he heard the name of his direct superior and mentor mentioned did he manage to truly listen to the Source's words. _

"_When I wondered how our side could exploit magic's exposure and the dire position of the Charmed Ones, Raynor reminded me of you. This appears to be the perfect opportunity to co-opt the prophecy of the twice-blessed child. Your humanity makes you the ideal demon to father the child, the Seer tells me. And I have just been handed the Charmed One on a silver platter."_

_Cole tried to keep his voice nonchalant when he asked, "And what of her sisters, my lord?" _

_The Source pressed his lips together. "All back on the surface, and once I order Tempus reset time, none the wiser. The Power of Three may yet re-form, for my oracle tells me of another Halliwell sister. I plan to allow them this, Belthazor, once you agree to your assignment. If you do not, I may have to lure your witch back to the Underworld and put her in her sister's place."_

"_No," Cole said. "That-that won't be necessary. I accept, my lord. Please tell me of the prophecy, and this mysterious sister." _

_Which the Source promptly did, never losing his feral smile. Hearing his boss describe the particulars, and how the mother-to-be would have to bear the weight of the child's powers, Cole tried to believe he'd made the right choice. _

Alone in his master's presence again, Cole attempted to rediscover that logical certainty. It was harder now. The Source's stare bored into him. He kept his own eyes fixed on the ground.

Moments later, the Seer returned with Prue. "My lord," she said to the Source, "I fear your hopes are for now in vain. The prophecy has yet to come to pass."

The Source rounded on Cole. "You and your witch are _dismissed, _Belthazor."

Prue tugged at his arm this time. She shot an annoyed look at the Seer as she and Cole exited the chamber. Cole was still focused on the Source's words and his own memories, but he couldn't completely fail to notice how agitated she was. He waited until they had return to their suite and sat down on their sofas before raising the issue.

"What was going on there between you and the Seer?"

Prue rolled her eyes. "I'm still trying to figure out what's going on with her, but clearly she doesn't like me. Or witches in general, obviously."

Cole made a neutral noise. She went on, "But all she did was get a vision off of my scar. And I know she did, because she reacted to it just like Phoebe does. She muttered something about 'the child of the winter fire.' Then she looked right at me and said, 'He is come.'"

He blinked. "You're saying that-"

She gave a nervous laugh before shaking her head in wonder. "I'm saying that first of all, the Seer lied to the Source's….face. If you can call it a face. Why would she do that? What game is she trying to play?"

"Prue." Cole was now impatient for her to just say it. She sighed slightly and looked at him. "I'm also telling you that I'm pregnant."


	8. The Witchlighter's Origins, Part 1

A/N: Quotes in this chapters come from episodes 3x02, "Magic Hour", and 4x01 and 4x02, "Charmed Again".

By mutual agreement, the three sisters and Leo called it a night soon after Phoebe talked to Paige. It was nearly 11pm. Piper and Phoebe headed home, while Leo stuck around to close up the club and see if he could introduce himself to his newest charge. Piper made him promise to orb home from the back alley before midnight.

As soon as they were in the door, Piper headed for the stairs. Phoebe was right behind her, ready to go to bed. But Piper kept going, up to the attic. "Piper!" Phoebe called after her sister. "What're you doing?"

Piper didn't slow down. "Getting some answers. I'm going to summon Mom and Grams."

"Can't you at least wait until the morning? Sleep on this a little? It's almost midnight." A yawn finished Phoebe's protest.

Piper half-turned on the staircase. "Phoebe, we found out tonight that we have another sister who we never even knew existed. I don't care what time it is, I want answers." She continued up the stairs. Phoebe suppressed a groan and rolled her eyes, but followed Piper into the attic.

Silently they got out the candles and a lighter, needed to create a protective circle for the magically summoned dead spirits. Piper got a little choked up when she thought about the last time they'd done this, with Prue. She covered it up by finding the summoning spell in the Book of Shadows. Phoebe came over to the lectern, and they chanted together:

_Hear these words, hear our cry,_

_Spirits from the other side, _

_Come to we who summon thee,_

_Cross now the great divide._

A beat and then bright lights coalesced into the familiar form of Penny Halliwell. "Girls?" She blinked, slightly disoriented. "What's going on?"

"What's going on? Haven't you been watching us, Grams? Don't you know?" Piper almost broke down then, and Phoebe put her arms around her shoulders. She looked at her grandmother, who appeared as drawn and weary as Phoebe had seen her when she was alive and ill.

"Grams," Phoebe said quietly, "We learned something today, something we need to talk to you and Mom about. Could you, I don't know, summon her yourself?"

"Phoebe, what is this about?" Penny tried to feign continued ignorance.

"We know about our other sister, Grams. The one Mom had with her whitelighter. We found about her after she showed up at Prue's funeral." Phoebe paused to take a shuddery breath. There was a reason she'd wanted to wait to have this conversation.

"Oh." Penny hadn't quite expected the pieces to fall into place so quickly. No use pretending anymore, though, if they had figured out that much. "Well, all right then." She waved her hand and more bright lights appeared. The spirit of Patty Halliwell materialized inside the circle of candles an instant later.

"Piper, Phoebe…Mom?" The last word she directed at Penny, who simply raised her eyebrows at her daughter and kept her lips pressed together in a thin line. Piper finally spoke, her pain coming out in half choked off sentences while she glared at her mother and grandmother.

"I tried and tried for hours to summon either of you. To summon Prue. Nothing worked. Then Phoebe started getting premonitions about this girl. She orbs like a whitelighter, but Leo said the Elders have never heard of her. And-and she knows how to draw the triquetra. She's been coming to P3...and your name is on her birth certificate!" Piper's eyes pleaded with Patty, like she was four again and her bad dreams could be banished with a few soothing words and a hug. She'd been ready to believe at P3 with Leo holding her hands and his voice of reassurance, but that wasn't so easy now.

Patty stepped forward. "Piper, listen to me. I know this news is a huge shock, especially today. But sweetie, it had to be this way. Sam and I--"

Piper blinked furious tears away. "You mean it's true? This girl Paige is really our sister?"

Patty nodded. "It happened after your father and I were divorced. You two were too little to understand -- you just thought mommy had gotten a little fat." She smiled briefly, remembering. Then she turned sober again. "We were frightened, Piper. Of the Elders and what they'd do if they found out, and of standing in the way of your destiny."

Phoebe spoke up then. "So you just gave her up?" It had been one thing for her to consider that as some abstract plan, but when she looked at her mother and grandmother, she couldn't imagine them actually deciding to do it.

Penny answered, "Phoebe, do you remember that conversation you and I had about, oh, seven months ago?"

After a moment, Phoebe said with a sigh, "You told me that logic and reason go out the window when love gets involved." She dared to look at her mother, and saw Patty nod once, with what looked like tears at the corners of her eyes.

"It was the hardest thing I ever did," Patty said. "And for Sam, too. Especially Sam." She and Penny shared a look before Patty went on, "He understood that we didn't have any other options, and the last thing he would have wanted was for you three to lose your birthright, but still, he struggled. We brought the baby to St. Michael's Church after she was born, and asked the nuns there to find a good home for her." Penny gripped her hand. "And they did find one, a very nice couple adopted her…a fireman and his wife."

Piper and Phoebe had gone a little wide-eyed at the mention of Sam. What they knew about him came from Patty's letters to him, and what they'd found two years ago in the little shack he'd lived in by the lake. Neither of them had really considered the magical implications of the affair, especially on them. Talk about 'secrets hid in the night', Phoebe thought.

Penny cleared her throat. "The bottom line is she is your sister, girls. Well, half-sister, technically."

Patty quickly added, "But by my half, which makes her a sister witch."

Shaking her head, Phoebe said, "But you're saying she was raised by mortals. Grams, how was that supposed to --"

"I bound her powers, Phoebe. Right after she was born."

Piper looked at her grandmother. "Apparently not all of them, Grams. She can orb. We saw her orb when Shax attacked her." Before Penny could respond, Piper continued, "So the reason you're okay with telling us this now is that you think she can help us re-form the Charmed Ones." The edge of sarcasm in her voice was muted but unmistakable.

Both their grandmother and mother nodded slowly. "Piper," Patty said, "Everything that's happened, losing Prue, finding out you have another sister -- this is your destiny, sweetheart. I know it's a lot to accept, but that's what you have to do. Demons won't stop coming after you, and you're vulnerable without the Power of Three. We want you to have it back so that you'll be that much safer."

In a small tired voice, Piper said, "What about what I want? What about the number of times I tried to summon either of you, or Prue, and got nothing? Where were you?"

Penny strengthened her hold on her daughter's hand as she looked at her granddaughters. "We were with Prue. Helping her through this."

Piper's hopeful look was almost two much for the two spirits to bear. "We know you want to see her, Piper," Patty said quietly, "But you can't, not yet."

"Why?" Phoebe joined in Piper's plea. She was beginning to see that their world was going to change even more than it had these last few days. What I wouldn't give to hear Prue's advice, Phoebe thought.

"Because seeing Prue right now, talking to her, would keep her alive for you. You need time to accept her death and grieve without magic interfering. Just like you did when I passed on," Grams told them.

"Can you at least tell us she's okay?" Phoebe almost demanded. The two spirits looked at one another for a moment.

"She's a little confused, a little scared, but that's normal when a soul crosses," Patty finally replied.

"Those are also normal reactions when a witch comes into her powers," Penny added sagely, raising her eyebrows at Piper.

Piper sighed. Sometimes she forgot just how stubborn and frustrating her grandmother could be. It also looked like 'destiny' wasn't done with them yet, either. "Okay, I give up. How are we supposed to do this?"

"It has to be here in the attic, by the book, just like before," Patty said. "You'll know when."

Penny gave her granddaughters a long look, and then turned to her daughter. "Come on, Patty. The rest is up to them." Seconds later, the two spirits dissipated into the air.

Phoebe and Piper stood still for several moments. Finally Phoebe quirked a smile at Piper and asked, "Well, did you get your answers?"

"Do I ever, really?" Piper shook her head. "I just wish we'd --"

Whatever it was, Piper didn't get to say it, because they both heard a loud groan from downstairs. They were down the stairs onto the second floor seconds later. There was Leo, squatting and clutching at a wound in his abdomen. In horror, Phoebe saw the shaft of a black arrow sticking out of the wound.

"Oh, god, Leo!" Phoebe rushed forward before Piper could react. She helped her brother-in-law sit down fully on the hallway's carpet before he fell over, trying not to break off the arrow in the wound. She was about to ask what had happened when Leo began to tell them, between his labored breaths.

"Darklighter. He came up from behind us…when Paige and I were leaving P3. I told her to run. Then she orbed once and ran to her car. The darklighter ignored her. Focused on me." He looked at Piper, whose arms were crossed against her chest. She hadn't moved. "I wasn't fast enough."

Piper glared at him. "No, you weren't. Leo!" She was on the carpet beside him an instant later, clutching his hands. Phoebe looked at her, concerned. Memories of the last time they'd been in this position flashed through her mind. Of course, last time Prue had removed the arrow first. Piper had healed Leo after switching powers with him. Glancing at her sister now, Phoebe was almost positive she was considering that same plan.

"Not again," Piper muttered to herself. "This cannot be happening again. Not now, not ever."

Phoebe looked over at her sharply. Time to take control of the situation -- someone had to. "Well, it is happening, Piper. We need to figure out what to do. Leo, should we cast the Power-Switching spell again?"

Leo winced as another wave of poison-induced pain came over him. "No," he managed to say after it passed. "You can't," he told Piper, who had been about to protest. "It'll switch out your powers too, Phoebe. Like last time. But now…"

Phoebe nodded in understanding. "Now I don't have anyone to switch powers with."

"So how do we get you healed then, Leo?" Piper demanded.

His eyes had started to glaze over from the pain, but Leo focused on her and gritted his teeth. "I talked to Paige. Got her address. Find her, get her here. She can channel…" He closed his eyes in pain.

Piper shook his arm. "Leo! Stay with us just another minute. She can channel what? Your power to heal?" Weakly, Leo nodded.

Phoebe bit her lip, and helped Leo reach in his pocket for a folded scrap of paper. Written on it was an address in the 2200 block of Church Street. Smiling a little at the irony, she said to Piper, "I'll be back as soon as I can, okay?" Piper barely glanced up in acknowledgement.

Fifteen minutes later Phoebe pulled up in front of a beige-colored multi-unit building. She found the door marked 4C and knocked softly. A few moments passed before a rather shaken Paige opened the door. "Phoebe! What's going on? Is Leo okay?"

"No, he's, he's not, Paige." Phoebe gestured toward the open doorway. "Can I come in before I tell you more, though? This isn't a conversation we should have in your hallway."

"Um, sure." Paige stepped aside and absently waved Phoebe to her couch. They sat down. "You're going to tell me who the guy in black leather with the crossbow was, aren't you?"

Phoebe gave her little sister a quirked, tight lipped smile. "I'll do more than that. I'm going to tell you who you are, and who we are." Paige looked at her sharply.

Phoebe took a deep breath. Then she jumped right in. "We are witches, Paige. Magical witches with supernatural powers. It's basically a genetic thing, and we…"

"Got your powers from your mother and grandmother, who got them from her mother, and so on, all the way back to Melinda Warren, a young good witch who was burned at the stake in Salem in 1692. She had three different powers: telekinesis, temporal stasis, and the power of premonition. Before she died she had a vision of three sister witches, her descendents, each with one of her magical gifts, who would be the most powerful good witches ever known." Paige shook her head. "It all sounded crazy, even though Leo seems like a good guy."

Phoebe struggled to close her mouth, which had fallen open in astonishment. "He-he told you all that?"

Paige nodded, a little bemused by Phoebe's reaction. "He also said that he's magical too, but he's not a witch. He guides witches and tries to protect them as they battle evil. Like a guardian angel, but there was a special word he used."

" 'Whitelighter,'" Phoebe supplied. She rested her chin on her elbow and considered the young woman across from her. Leo hadn't wasted any time getting Paige informed about the Halliwells, and now he didn't have much time himself. Plus, Shax was still out there. "Did he explain how you fit into everything? I mean, you are our sister."

Paige laughed, a bit nervously, Phoebe thought. "Well, he said that our mother's affair was with her whitelighter. And that that was totally forbidden, so they couldn't keep me." She looked at Phoebe incredulously. "But that makes me part whitelighter."

Phoebe leaned forward. "It makes you part whitelighter. You can magically move yourself anywhere, just like Leo can. That's how you escaped on the rooftop tonight. We…were watching you, to try and understand why I got a premonition at the funeral."

Paige blinked a few times, taking that in. What had she walked into, here? She'd been looking for her birth family, not a cross between the CIA and the Addams family. "Wait, you get premonitions of the future? So that means Piper and … Prue…." She trailed off, uneasy about bringing up that subject.

Smiling sadly, Phoebe answered, "Piper can freeze time, and recently she's been able to speed up molecules too, which lets her blow up things. Prue was telekinetic."

"And you think I could become the third sister witch now that Prue's … gone?"

"Right now, we're just hoping you can help Leo," Phoebe told her. "The guy with the crossbow was a darklighter. They hunt whitelighters and try to kill them with poisonous arrows. That's why he told you to run."

Paige's mouth dropped open. "He's dying? Oh, my god. I was just talking to him! How do you think I can help? I mean, Phoebe, I'd totally do whatever I can, but come on. I'm just a social worker's assistant, not a doctor."

Smiling slightly as she glanced at her watch, Phoebe replied, "You might not be a doctor, but Leo was, in his mortal life. And he's got the power to heal, he just can't use it on himself. We think you can use it for him, though. But we really don't have much time, so are you willing to help?" Now totally serious, she stood up.

Again under Phoebe's intense gaze, Paige stammered, "Of course, but I still don't get how --"

"The short answer is 'channeling'. I'll give you a longer answer on the way. Come on."

Flooring the gas, Phoebe got them back to the Manor in just under ten minutes. Less than a minute later Phoebe nudged Paige ahead of her down the hallway and towards Leo's prone body. Piper looked up at them. "Hurry. I don't know how much longer he can hold on."

Paige knelt beside Piper and placed her hands on Leo's chest. Phoebe, hovering behind them, saw that Piper had removed the arrow and wrapped it in a towel. The wound wasn't that large, but it did look raw and deep. Paige tried to ignore it and concentrate instead on helping Leo, her brother-in-law, heal.

Phoebe had said one major element in magic, real magic, was intent. So she let her thoughts guide her. A week ago you were just a guy who seemed to always be hanging around the bar at my favorite nightclub, she thought. Please don't leave me just when I find out you're part of my family too. I have too many questions you still have to answer, Leo.

When the healing iridescent light came through her hands, Paige blinked. Leo was nearly healed before her mind registered what her eyes saw. And when he sat up, the wound gone, Paige looked from him to her hands and back again. Then before anyone could stop her, she turned and ran down the stairs and out of the Manor.


	9. Brotherhood of Scorn

A/N: A quote in this chapter comes from episode 1x06, "The Wedding from Hell". Klea, by the way, is a canon demon.

Cole stared at Prue for several seconds. Finally he said, "The Seer never tells the Source anything but the complete truth revealed by her visions." He looked her over speculatively.

"You think I'm --" she started to retort, but his pointed look made her stop short. "You _don't _think I'm lying."

"I think that obviously there's more going on here than either of us realizes, Prue." He shrugged. "Maybe it _is_ some sort of game the Seer is trying to play, like you said. I just know that this hasn't happened before, at least not while I've been a member of the brotherhood. Something significant has to have changed, and it was enough to affect her loyalties."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Clearly. We just fulfilled this prophecy that the Source thinks is so important. Somehow, anyway. How _did _I get pregnant so quickly? And how could the Seer even tell?"

He tried to keep his smirk muted; she wanted a straight answer, not teasing boasts about what he had thought was obvious. "You're still thinking by mortal standards. I'm a demon, Prue, as you've reminded me more than once."

She surprised them both when she interjected, "Half demon. You've got to still have enough humanity in you to not --" Prue gestured toward him, unable, or perhaps unwilling to finish the thought.

Cole couldn't help himself; he laughed aloud. "Not be bound by the basic rules of demonic reproduction?" He leaned back on the sofa, still chuckling. "I am, believe me. However powerful you think I might be, the same mechanisms that applied to my mother and every other demon apply to me. To you." He looked at her thoughtfully. The Source hadn't intervened with 'every other demon' like he had with Prue.

Prue raised her chin, but couldn't quite look him in the eye. "And these rules are?"

He said softly, "Demonic sperm is more aggressive than a mortal's, Prue. More like a very nasty virus, really. Between that and whatever black magic the Source worked on your cycle during the time pause, I'm not all that surprised by the idea that you're pregnant this quickly. I suppose the Seer could sense the effects of that truth. That's how the power of premonition works, after all." A muscle in his jaw tensed slightly.

She followed the pattern of the embroidered upholstery with her eyes while she thought that over. Of course she'd known this would eventually happen when she'd agreed to the Source's demand, but still, a part of her had expected to have some time to get used to the idea. She didn't even know how to react to the news that the Source had done more to her while time stood still.

Leaning forward, Cole reached for her hands, and she let him take hold of them. They looked at each other. "I meant what I said about the hard part just beginning, Prue. This whole plan wasn't going to be easy for the Source to pull off even if everything went the way he wanted. If the Seer is acting alone too, who knows how this might play out? All we can do is try to stay one step ahead. So, tell me again, what did she say about her vision?"

Prue dropped her gaze to the cushions again. "Well, she said 'he is come,' and 'the child of the winter fire.' I guess the first part is obvious, except that it isn't. I have no idea what the second part means."

Cole again suppressed a smirk. "What wasn't obvious to you about the Seer telling you you're pregnant, besides how soon the news came?" When her only answer was to set her jaw and refuse to look at him, he dropped her hands and came over to sat beside her. "Prue." She closed her eyes. He saw genuine confusion when she reopened them.

"The Seer said 'he.' There haven't been boys born into my family going back to, to, to I don't know when. I didn't even seriously think it was possible for powers to be passed on to boys for a while." She tried to shrug nonchalantly, but Cole wasn't completely fooled.

"The same family you renounced under oath?" he murmured. Slowly he reached out to cup her chin and turn her face back towards him. "Under the influence of the same good magic you abandoned? Demons hardly ever produce female children, Prue. The only case I know much about is the Seer herself."

Cole waved away her questioning look, and smiled to himself. He was getting better at judging her reactions, her thoughts. "As for her little metaphor," he went on, "My guess is it has to do with your due date."

Prue narrowed her eyes, but didn't move away from his touch. "My due date?" she echoed, suspicious as always.

He nodded, running his fingers along her jaw. "Most demonic pregnancies last about six months, but the Seer had thought this one would take longer, since it _is_ the twice blessed child. 'Winter fire' sounds like a reference to Imbolc, the midwinter wiccan sabbat or fire festival."

Prue blinked. "February second. That's in about eight and half months." She tried to glower at Cole, but his fingers still on her jaw line lessened the effect. "It might as well be human," she muttered.

"Are you really sure about that?" He dropped his hand to her shoulder. "Think about it, Prue. The twice blessed child, who was prophesied over three hundred years ago. You're his mother."

_The twice damned child_, a weak, shrill voice whispered in her mind. She shook her head slightly. Cole leaned over and whispered in her ear, "It could only have been you. You were the one the Seer saw in her vision. The most powerful of the Charmed Ones." He put his left hand against her abdomen. "Carrying this child."

Prue glanced down at his hand. She tried to imagine herself with a baby, and what came to her mind instead was the sneering voice of Hannah, the panther warlock. _My biological clock isn't the one that's ticking._ Almost without thinking, she looked him in the eye and asked, "Really?"

Slowly his smirk returned. "Really." They sat like that, bemused grins on their lips, for several moments. Then there was a knock on the suite's outer door.

A female demon was at the door when Cole went to answer it. "Klea," he said.

Her red-rimmed eyes darted between him and Prue, who had gotten up and now stood several steps behind him. "Delic wants you in the brotherhood's chambers right away, Belthazor." Her eyes rested on Prue. "Bring the witch." She dematerialized into the air of the passageway, with her eyes following seconds later.

Cole looked out into the passageway, his face blank. He turned back to Prue, and said in a deceptively light tone, "The brotherhood wants to meet you."

She nodded, and waved toward the door. "Lead the way, then."

The chamber they entered was round and hollowed out of rock, like the cavern Prue had woken up in. Demons clad in black stood in a semi-circle, facing them. At their head stood one who was tall, thin, and grey-eyed. Cole spoke to him even as his gaze took in the rest of the assembled demons.

"Delic. You make a good leader of our brothers. The Source has chosen well."

"Has he, Belthazor? Forgive us for wondering that very thing. Some question whether this prophecy should be dependent on your perhaps _uncertain_ loyalties." Delic gestured to the surrounding demons. They stared at Cole and Prue, and several leered at Prue. She stared back at them evenly.

Cole's confidence didn't fade, but his voice was deadly quiet when he finally spoke. "Are you questioning the Source's plan, Delic? Because if you are," the semicircle of demons seemed to take a collective step forward, "It seems you're the one with uncertain loyalties." The brothers jeered at that.

"I am not the one who thwarted a two year long effort to destroy the Charmed Ones, Belthazor." Delic's tone remained even and thoughtfully mocking, but the brothers' jeers grew louder. "I am not the one who showed them sympathy, I am not the one who killed the Triad under suspicious circumstances, and I am not the one who forced our own leader to blackmail him back into the fold." The jeers became a low roar.

Cole began to reply, but before he could get more than three words heard over the shouts filling the chamber, Klea stepped forward from the semi-circle. She arched her eyebrows at Cole. "And you weren't the one who killed Raynor, were you, Delic?"

Silence fell over the brothers. All eyes were on Cole, even Prue's. He looked at Delic. "I killed Raynor because his handling of the Pirelli affair was about to expose us to the witches. One of the first and most important lessons he taught me was 'better the betrayal of one brother than the exposure of all brothers.'" Murmurs started again.

Delic gestured for quiet. "You betrayed us yourself long before Raynor may have erred, Belthazor. You betrayed us the instant your humanity was reawakened. Reawakened by the love of a Charmed One, of all things." Delic stepped toward Cole, and the demons began to sneer again. "Now we are expected to believe that not only have you come back to us completely, freed of the witch's influence, but that you are the only demon who can sire the twice-blessed child?"

Amid the demons' sneers of disbelief, Klea spoke up once more. "With another Charmed One, no less." She nodded toward Prue, who had silently watched the entire exchange. "The Source must be very confident about where your loyalties lie, Belthazor. He devised this entire plan, gambled with a great potential advantage for evil, and based upon what? Your willingness to take your former lover's sister to your bed!" Her laugh echoed through the chamber.

Cole's voice, when there was again silence enough to speak, trembled with suppressed rage. "Is the Source's confidence not _enough_ for you, Klea?" He looked around at the other demons. "Is it not enough for any of you? Just say the word, brothers. You know your duty, and I know mine. I _should _shimmer straight to the Source with what I've heard here and report you all for disloyalty far worse than anything I've committed."

He sighed and looked at Delic. "You would dare to doubt the Source because of me. I am humbled by that demonstration of my importance to you, Delic, truly I am. But if you would do that on my account, surely you will not give me whatever punishment I might deserve. Surely our oaths to each other, sharing each other's blood, still represent something to you." Again he looked around at the members of the brotherhood. They had gone quiet of their own accord. A few nodded at his words.

Then Cole laid a hand on Prue's arm and drew her over to stand with him before Delic. "Despite what you all might think, my human feelings for the witch Phoebe Halliwell were a hindrance to a mission that is now past me, and the Source has seen fit to give me another chance to turn my weakness into strength. Brothers, I may be the demon destined to father this powerful child, but we will raise him together. He will be ours." Cole squeezed Prue's arm lightly. "The witch destined to be his mother has already turned."

Delic considered Prue. "The Source picked the right witch, at least. This one's reputation is known throughout the Underworld. Strong, willful, and powerful enough to carry the child. I daresay her sister couldn't have been the one." He laughed aloud when Prue's lips curled into a cruel smile. The other demons chortled. "Well, now I believe you aren't lying to us outright, brother. Still…"

Klea's laughter rang out again, and this time it was filled with disbelief as well as derision. "I suppose I must be the one forgiven now, Delic. I am not so willing to take Belthazor at his word when he declares that the witch has truly joined our side. He himself proved that the Charmed bond is not so easily broken." She sneered at Prue. "That was a token of pettiness all witches are prone to, nothing more."

"What do you suggest, Klea?" Cole tried to bite back his impatient exasperation. "She is already bound to me through the strong magic of a dark wedding."

No one was more surprised than Cole when Prue spoke up. "Are you offering me initiation into the brotherhood, Klea? If you are, then say so. I will accept, and then I can go through whatever ritual is involved. Shouldn't that be enough proof?"

Klea's grin became a smug smile. "Oh, that will probably be plenty. But only Delic can offer you initiation, witch." She turned to her leader. "Only he can determine whether you are potentially demon enough."

Once he'd gotten over his astonishment, Cole quickly seized upon the opening Klea had handed him. "Sounds to me like quite a leadership opportunity, Delic. And like Klea said, Prue joining the ranks of the brotherhood would be more than adequate proof of her loyalties."

Delic looked at Cole. "And perhaps an adequate test of yours as well, Belthazor. Very well." He turned to one of the demons beside him. "Get me an athame." To Prue he said, "Kneel before me, witch, and soon we will share blood."


	10. The Witchlighter's Origins, Part 2

Leo quickly orbed to make sure Paige had gotten home safely - he thought it was a safe bet that would be where she'd go. Piper and Phoebe finally went to bed. Neither slept very well.

In the morning, Piper and Phoebe unfolded the newspaper and paged though the Metro section. Phoebe had quickly written a short obituary Thursday night, after they'd moved Prue's body. It noted that the funeral was the next day, although the obit itself would run in the _Chronicle'_s Saturday edition. She figured Grams must have done pretty much the same thing for her mother - a very quick turn around on the obit, possible at the right price, kept appearances normal, but didn't invite unwelcome scrutiny. Magic, or specifically the fear of exposure, really did touch every aspect of their lives, she thought. Down to the tiniest details.

Piper took her time reading what Phoebe had written, pausing to smile wistfully or swallow past the lump in her throat. Phoebe stared at the headline the Chronicle had given the piece, which the paper had folded into a crime blotter story about the investigation: "Photojournalist dies in freak accident: Victim, 30, found in home." They'd used that exact term with the police, and Phoebe tried out the explanation again in her head. Today, she knew, she would have to start to deal with the neighbors' questions. _My sister died two days ago. No, she wasn't sick. It was just a freak accident. I know, yes, it's horrible. What a world we live in. Thank you. Yes, she was only thirty. Yes, it's tragic beyond belief. _

Piper looked up when she finished reading the article. "This is really good," she said quietly. "Everything about Prue, everything that mattered, it's all here."

Phoebe blinked in disbelief, and reached for the folded newspaper. "You think so? I just wanted the obit to be accurate, Piper. As accurate as possible anyway. Better her family write it than some reporter."

Piper, who had a definite opinion on the choice in question, was just about to let Phoebe hear it - again - when the doorbell rang. She stood and looked at the clock by the door to the laundry room. "It's barely eight thirty. Who do you think -"

Shaking her head, Phoebe answered, "Three guesses and the first two don't count." Piper followed her to the front door, where Paige stood, looking uneasy.

"It was unlocked, but I thought I'd ring the bell anyway," she said by way of greeting.

"Good morning to you, too," Piper replied, not bothering to hide the sarcasm. "I guess you'd like to come in?"

"Yeah," Paige replied. "I've got all these questions, about last night and what it all means and just…everything." She smiled a little sheepishly.

Phoebe looked from one sister to the other before smiling and clapping Paige on the shoulder. "Of course you do. Come right in and we'll try to answer them all." She turned with Paige back into the foyer, shooting Piper a look over her shoulder. Piper rolled her eyes at the front door, but closed it behind her and followed her sisters into the living room.

Phoebe had waved Paige to the couch. "So, pretty amazing what you did last night, huh?" She grinned slightly at Paige's flustered look.

"I guess. Leo's okay, right? I mean, the wound disappeared and he started to get up -" Paige bit her lip and glanced at Piper. Maybe it hadn't really worked, she thought. Better not remind her that I just bailed on them, again.

Phoebe's grin widened. "He's fine, Paige. Thanks to you. In fact, he can help explain. Leo!" She turned toward the foyer. A moment later Leo walked in, smiling slightly. Paige gaped at him.

"Hey, Paige," Leo said quietly, trying not to startle her further.

"You're okay," she answered. She shook her head slightly, and shifted on her feet.

"About that," Leo started to say, but she cut him off, nodding.

"No, I get it. I mean, I'm part whitelighter and all, so white light comes out of my hands and poof, you're healed." She nodded again, but Phoebe and Leo could see her lower lip jutting out a bit.

Leo frowned at her. "Actually, that's not what happened, Paige. You channeled _my _healing power. I'm not sure you have the power to heal on your own."

Phoebe looked from Leo to Paige before she jumped back into the conversation. She put a hand on Paige's arm, and steered her back to the couch. "We're not really sure about a lot of things about you, though. Like where exactly you were born or how Mom kept you a secret from the Elders … it's all pretty mysterious."

Paige raised an eyebrow before she sat down. "The Elders?"

Before Phoebe could reply, Piper spoke up from where she stood by the entryway. "The whitelighters' bosses. They," she pressed her lips together and shook her head, "They don't believe in the whitelighter-witch relationship being anything but professional." Leo glanced at his wife curiously. Piper had taken the Elders' opposition to their own relationship very personally, and she hadn't been shy about her feelings about his bosses. But this was different, and Leo saw that Piper was trying to be sensitive to Paige, whatever the youngest Halliwell's feelings might be.

Paige slowly nodded. "So they were against my … father, and our mother, being together too. They would have been against me being born, wouldn't they? If they had known, I mean." She glanced uneasily at Leo. Slowly, and sadly, he nodded.

"Yes, they were. The Elders are used to working a certain way, and they fear anything that changes that order. They were afraid that allowing even one relationship between a witch and her whitelighter opened the door for evil exploitation. They were especially worried because your mom already was…" he paused and looked at Piper, unsure. Paige took the hint. She looked up at him clear-eyed.

"The mother of the Charmed Ones. Makes sense. I wasn't just a freak, I was a dangerous spare freak. Okay." She glanced at Piper, who had gone very still. "I'll just…stop wasting your time." She got up and walked out the front door.

Phoebe tried to call after her, but Leo said, "Let her go. She needs to deal with what this means for her, and she has to do it by herself. " Phoebe started to protest, and Leo quickly added, "I'll follow her, make sure she doesn't get hurt, and be ready if she wants to talk, or come back. You two need to focus on Shax."

Piper sighed. She looked at him for a moment and then said, "Fine. I want this demon vanquished. We'll start working on a spell." She headed for the stairs.

Leo found Paige parking on the edge of Mission Dolores Park. She sat in her car a moment before getting out and walking into the park. Deciding to follow her at an unobtrusive distance, Leo waited a few minutes. When he caught up with her, she was walking seemingly at random along the path, and muttering under her breath.

"I can't believe what…how did that…what did I get myself into?" As she kept moving, Leo had to duck behind trees and benches on the chance that she would nervously turn and notice him. Thus, the appearance of the young man dressed in black caught him off guard.

The young man approached Paige. When he came into view her face lit up. "Shane? You're okay!" She ran to him, laughing shakily. He stood stiffly while she hugged him. "I was so worried, and then all this stuff started happening… I found out, Shane. I'm really related to the Halliwell sisters." Her voice as she said this was not as joyful as she thought it would be, just hours ago. The grim look on Shane's face didn't help.

"That's what I was afraid of." He pulled away from her. "Some cops were waiting for me back at my apartment last night. They wouldn't leave until I answered all these questions about you and the Halliwells." Shane ran his hand through his hair. "I didn't even understand half of it, Paige. I don't even know them! The cops kept going on about all this occult stuff, and unsolved cases. They said they've got evidence tying the Halliwells to dozens of cases over the last few years. I just…" He finally stopped when he saw the look on her face.

"I don't need protection from my own family, Shane," Paige said, her voice dangerously quiet. "So if that's what you're trying to do, please just leave me alone."

Faking nonchalance, he back away, hands raised in mock defeat. "Hey, I was just trying to warn to you to be careful. Didn't want cops knocking on your door in the middle of the night - because I care, okay? But if you want to get mixed up with whatever the Halliwells are involved in, great. Glad you finally found your birth family." He shook his head and started to walk off.

Paige stood in the middle of the path for several seconds, stunned into silence. She did feel mixed up. Mixed up and now more freaked out than ever. "Shane. Wait. I didn't mean that - " A noise in the bushes to the side of the path cut her off. Before Leo could duck into the open to warn or help them, a black clad figure stepped onto the path. He had an energy ball in his palm, and he drew back his arm and hurled it at Shane.

Paige felt her body react before her mind did: she grabbed Shane and pushed him down to the ground, throwing herself over him. The energy ball flew over them, crashing into a tree, which burst into flame. The demon stopped short when his eyes fell on Paige. He sneered and then shimmered away. Leo hurried over a moment later, and helped Paige to her feet. Both of them eyed Shane uneasily.

Shane sat up, rubbing his head. "What," he asked, "was _that?_" Paige turned to Leo. She had no idea where to begin, or whether she even wanted to.

Over his more than fifty years of experience as a whitelighter, situations like this one never got any easier, Leo thought. But, appearances occasionally to the contrary, he wasn't in the business of routinely manipulating mortal memories, and, Leo told himself, that wouldn't change just because he'd lost his most powerful charge to exposure. He held out a hand to Shane. "That," he told the young man as he helped him up, "is the secret the Halliwell sisters have to keep from the police."

Paige stared at Leo. But when Shane turned to her for confirmation, she found herself telling him an abridged version of the whole story. She felt like she needed to tell someone, to make the whole thing seem as real and serious as Leo, Piper, and Phoebe were treating it. As long as she kept talking, it was harder and harder to laugh.

Shane started shaking his head before she finished. "What you're telling me is that neither of you are human, that the Halliwell sisters aren't human, and that the guys who attacked us," he gestured to himself and Paige, "also aren't human - that they are actual evil demons. You want me to believe that you've all got supernatural powers, and that Paige is being targeted because she's supposed to take the place of the Halliwell sister who just died in some pre-destined coven of, of…" Shane paused and glanced back and forth wildly between Paige and Leo. He seemed to want them to deny it, but Leo only put a steadying hand on Paige's shoulder. She swallowed and nodded. Somehow, it was easier to accept when everything was spelled out.

"Of sister witches, Shane. I'm a witch. I was born a witch." Even with her growing confidence, Paige couldn't look him in the eye for long. She studied her hands instead, remembering how the healing power had flowed through them. The goodness of that, the rightness, gradually nudged aside her fear. But when she dared look up again, Shane was backing away.

"Stop. Just stop. This is crazy. I can't believe that you believe all this!" Paige started to respond, but Shane walked off, calling over his shoulder, "Maybe you accept everything he's said, but I don't have to." A moment later he turned a corner and was gone.

She stood looking after him until Leo said, "I'm sorry, Paige. Sometimes that's what happens when mortals -" He stopped, tensed and listening. "Piper and Phoebe are calling me," he said to Paige's baffled look. "They've probably found the spell."

Paige shook her head. Things were happening so fast - had it really only been forty eight hours ago that she was simply another young assistant down at the South Bay center, blissfully unaware? Her own curiosity had changed all that, and curiosity made her ask now, "Calling you? How? What spell? Leo, what are you even doing here?" But he shook his head and held out his hands.

"There's no time to tell you everything. Your sisters need you, and I need you to trust me right now. Take my hands, Paige." She blinked at him in confusion, but did. They orbed back to the Manor, straight into the attic.

As Paige stumbled and recovered herself, the sound of rushing wind came through the open door. Piper and Phoebe, huddled around the Book of Shadows, beckoned her over. "Shax is here, we've got the spell. All we need is you," Phoebe told her.

Paige glanced at the attic door. The noise was getting louder. Piper didn't meet her eye as she looked back at them. Phoebe, between them, took Paige's hand and started to chant. The door shook on its hinges, and Piper took Phoebe's other hand. Shax burst through the door seconds later. Over the noise, they chanted:

_Evil wind that blows, _

_Killer who lurks below, _

_No longer shall you dwell,_

_Death takes you with this spell. _

The demon howled as he exploded into blinding light. Once he was gone, Piper and Phoebe looked at each other. "The Power of Three," Phoebe whispered.

Piper stood looking up at the neon sign, P3, for several minutes before going into the club. Monday morning meant either inventory or a booking meeting, depending on the week. New Found Glory would be headlining a benefit Friday night. _Work, _Piper told herself. Surprisingly, keeping busy with the club's routines took her mind off of everything- for a while. But every so often, she would glance at the corner alcove where she, Phoebe and Prue had celebrated, brainstormed, and grieved together. She tried to ignore the memories, but it was as if some unseen force compelled her to look.

Then she saw it. The sweater- Prue's favorite sweater. She went over to the alcove sofas to pick it up, and the distinct odor of cigarette smoke hit her nose. Piper turned around, ready to snap at whoever had snuck into the closed building to light up. But what she saw took the words from her mouth. Three women wearing very tight leather stood watching her intently. Smoke surrounded them. Piper flung her hands at them, but nothing happened.

"We are immune to your powers, Piper. You can't hurt us." The leader of the three women stepped forward as she said this. Her voice softened. "But we won't hurt you."

Piper raised an eyebrow, but she simply nodded to the athame in the leader's hand. "Then what is it you want?"

Another of the women stepped forward. "To give you what you want," she said. And with that, she blew a puff of smoke in Piper's face.

Repulsed, Piper almost jumped back. "What in the hell?" But seconds later, her question answered itself. Nails lengthened and curled into claws; and the demons' dark brown warpaint spread in streaks across her face. She blinked, and then smiled at the two demon women. "I guess I owe you a thank you."

The lead demon shook her head. "Your presence is enough. Come." They took her hands and vanished together in a poof of smoke.

They rematerialized in a vacant lot. Piper shrugged free of their grip, but before she could protest again, her attention, and the women's, had shifted to a very intimidating young man nearly covered in tattoos, who was swaggering through the nearby alley. Nodding to each other, the women approached him, their grins turning to hisses, as Piper hung back.

Yet her reluctance was soon overwhelmed by a small voice in her head, one whispering that this man was evil, and had blood on his hands, just like Shax. Just like Shax, he needed to pay, to know the pain of those he hurt. These thoughts pulled her forward to join in blocking the man's path.

"Ladies, I don't know what you're up to, but I got places to be, you know?" The only response was a unison of hisses, and the billow of cigarrete smoke. Piper watched as whatever the stuff was took effect, reducing the man to a writhing, whimpering ball. A slow grin spread across her face. This is what she had needed.

Paige rolled her eyes at her desk, stacked high with paper files. When would they digitize these things? Sighing, she began sorting the files, mostly adoption applications, by due date. Suddenly, the name on one caught her eye. "The Powell kid," Paige murmured, slapping her forehead. She had been doing research on his case last Thursday when she'd seen Prue's funeral notice on the net. And his adoption hearing was scheduled for, she rechecked the master list, 9 am the next morning.

"Damn," Paige breathed, suddenly frantic. She turned back to her computer; three very long documents still needed to be finished before the file was complete. It was 3:44, though, and this was definitely more than two hours' worth of work.

Her mind flew, trying to see a way out. She needed the hearings this week to go well; Mr. Cowen had been hinting heavily that she was good enough to go through certification, finally, and that this week's work was, well, like an exam to prove it.

Stay late? Sure, but she'd been hoping to track down Shane, see if they could talk things out - maybe even stop by the Halliwells… _the Halliwells. _She suddenly felt like there was just enough time for a drive halfway across town and back.

The front door was unlocked again, and if she hadn't been on a mission Paige would have wondered about that. As it was, she only passed Phoebe, in the living room, doing something with a map and a string tied around a crystal. She'd have to try not to explain if she said hello, so she didn't.

Sometime around the attic stairs she decided to simply copy the spell she needed once she found it. And it was easy to find, somehow there in the front of the book a few pages in.

"To Gather Knowledge".

_What is sought I cannot know_

_Wisdom of ancients, let my mind grow_

_Towards what I seek become my guide_

_For this day, may facts no longer hide._

She didn't feel different. But getting back to work to test it would be the only way to know. Passing the living room again, she heard Phoebe mutter, "Piper, where _are _you?" Paige guiltily ducked out the front door just as Phoebe raised her voice to call "Leo!"

The research and form completion took no more than half an hour max, back at the office. "Whew," Paige sighed, sending the final drafts to the printer. All of Jimmy Powell's biographical data had just sprung right out of the databases. She was even able to get head starts on the files of kids with hearings later in the week. One of them even had a birth parent living near the Halliwells.

She didn't remember making the decision - just driving back to Prescott Street, letting herself in, and making a beeline for the wooden chest in the conservatory. Somewhere in here - yes, a photo album. With the letters between - it was still hard to even think of calling Patty Halliwell "her" mom - and her whitelighter. Sam.

It took her breath away, how tender they were. One of Paige's dormmates at Stanford had written letters like this to her beau, and Paige, still thick in the punk scene, had scoffed at how unironically sappy the whole thing had seemed. But this? "They loved each other," she whispered. How many years had she wondered about them, about that question?

She is still mostly dry-eyed when she comes to a longer letter dated February 10, 1977. "_Sam," _it began.

_My hands are trembling as I write. I don't know how to tell you this. I can barely believe it myself, and I'm sure one of the girls will wander in and see me. Sam, darling, I'm pregnant. I think about seven weeks. I've been half in denial, half overjoyed the whole time. Forgive me, Sam, for waiting to tell you you're a father. Part of me hoped I could keep you, keep us all, safer that way. I think of my girls, how happy they'd be. I suppose I didn't want you to think we had taken their birthright from them. My mother still doesn't know - I dread her reaction as much as Theirs, I think. _

_But I am so happy, Sam. I love this baby already, and I love that she's yours. _

_All of my love,_

_Patty _

Paige doesn't realize there are tears running down her cheeks until Phoebe's frantic and confused voice brings her out of her reverie. "Paige, what're you doing, and doing here?" Then she waved away the question. "Nevermind right now - we have a major problem. Piper's missing." As Paige struggled to dry her eyes without Phoebe catching on, Phoebe filled her little sister in: "I can't find her by scrying, and Darryl Morris just called to tell me there are reports," they were now climbing the stairs to the attic, "of a group of women in brown outfits with warpaint on their faces. They've committed a bunch of assaults recently. He said one of them looked like Piper."

She started flipping through the book, and Paige tried to keep her focus. Was this what being a Charmed One was like? Crisis interrupting life every time they turned around?

She didn't like where these thoughts were taking her, not after what she had just read, and so she was secretly glad when Pheobe stopped at a page, looked up and said, "Uh-oh. Paige, we've got a problem." She turned the book around. "Piper's turned into a Fury. Look."

Paige had thought she'd seen demonic ugliness with Shax, but this - these Furies were just horrible looking. Magic sure was the opposite of glamorous. "So, uh, how do we get her back?"

Phoebe took a breath. "Repressed anger motivates them, and they're attracted to those who've committed evil, like moths to a flame the book says. Basically, they're extreme, supernaturally amped vigilantes. If -" she cut herself off. What was the use?

But Paige looked up, sharply. "If what? Something can help get her back?"

Phoebe ruefully shook her head. "If only my old boyfriend were here, he probably would've volunteered to be bait to lure the Furies to us."

Paige was still one page behind. "Your boyfriend was a murderer?"

The ruefully smile deepened. "You could say that. Except he killed witches with energy balls." Paige's mouth was a perfect stunned O. "He's in the book. But the point is, we don't have the easy start to a solution."

Paige thought about that. Pull-or-push. "Could we just lure Piper with whatever she's angry about?" She bit back "or whoever she's angry at?"

Phoebe's face was a mix of "what else can we do?", and intrigued. "I could write a spell, I suppose…" She eyed Paige. "You've got a theory."

Paige shifted her weight from foot to foot. "She's angry at me. You guys would've been able to just grieve in peace and then go back to being regular people, but I had to come into your lives," a self-deprecating grin crossed her face, "and keep your destiny going by taking Prue's place."

Their eyes met, and the same thought passed between them. "She's angry at Prue", came out as a revelation in unison.

"Okay," Phoebe continued thinking aloud. "Spell to summon a demon crossed with the spell to find a lost witch…."

"'Sister'," Paige put in. "I'm guessing 'witch' won't work that well if she's a Fury."

Phoebe smiled at that, and made a few more corrections. "Okay. You ready?"

They chanted:

_She who is pulled forth and back_

_Let us tell her what she lacks_

_Forces of darkness, forces of light_

_Bring us our sister so we may aid in her fight._

And sure enough, a whirlwind opened up, right there in the attic. Like Shax, Paige thought. Like Belthazor, Phoebe thought. But no, when the wind cleared all that stood in front of them was a Fury - Piper, a Fury. She hissed at both of them, and moved as if to claw at them.

"Leo!" they shouted. He hurried over as soon as he orbed in, and though Piper resisted, he was able to orb out with her.

"The maseloum", Phoebe answered Paige's look. "And we need to get there ourselves, fast." Paige could see where that was headed. She started shaking her head. Phoebe took her hands. "You''ve got to try. For Piper, okay?"

Paige nodded, numbly. The image of Piper Furious filled her mind, and she gripped Phoebe's hands. The next thing she knew they were standing in front of Prue's tomb. "Whew."

Piper's whole demeanor had changed - she was tense, frightened to even look at the inscription. Then, Paige spoke up. "_I _get it, okay? My parents died, and I hated them for it. I hated that they abandoned me, right when I needed them most." She was shouting now. "Face what you've been running from. You hate her for dying and abandoning you. It is okay to hate Prue!" The last line was almost screamed, and it snapped something within Piper.

She ran at the inscription, screamed at it: "I hate you! I hate you! Why did you have to die and leave me here all alone? Did you really think I didn't need you anymore?" Even as she screams this she has started to cry, and as she beats her fists against the tomb marker some of the strength goes out of her. As she sinks, crying, to the floor of the masoleum, Leo is beside her, and to his relief the warpaint is clearing from her face. "She always rushed into danger, and she never thought what would happen to us if we lost her," she continued, voice thick.

Paige let them have their moment. Not that she could do anything more, right then, than stare at that deceptively simple inscription.


	11. Killing Her Softly

Celebratory ritual followed celebratory ritual to mark Prue's entrance into the Brotherhood. Days passed. Cole was returning from one such event when he spotted the Seer, seemingly loitering outside in the passageway. "I have a vision your witch should see, Belthazor." She smiled coldly. "One she should be very interested in."

Cole looked down at her. "If my understanding's right, Seer, you have more important visions to concern yourself with. Such as the one you lied to the Source about." She didn't blink. He narrowed his eyes at her. "Do you know what kind of game you're playing? He'll kill you without a thought when he finds out the truth. And all for what?"

The Seer smiled. "The advancement of evil, of course. You can't honestly expect me to believe that a Charmed One should carry the prophesied child, Belthazor. Just as you cannot expect me to believe that you would want your child in the belly of that witch."

Cole gritted his teeth and took a step toward her. "The only thing that should matter is what the Source expects from -" The Seer fixed him with a piercing look.

"The Source's expectations are shaped by his knowledge of the future. Knowledge that I am among the first to provide to him. My visions are always true, in their way. But they are always influenced by what happens next. It is much the same as it is for -"

Cole cut her off. "Don't. Unless you want me as a greater enemy." He gestured for her to walk with him. "This most recent vision, what did it show?"

She pursed her lips. "Your witch's sister, consumed with anger at her. Anger that suppressed her grief and took control of her, attracting furies." Raising an eyebrow, she added, "If your wife has been fully turned, she'd want to enjoy it."

Cole considered this. If nothing else, going along with the Seer could help them figure out what she was up to. And besides, he was vengefully curious to see Piper Halliwell, the sarcastic but more magically passive sister who had been the only witch to cut his flesh in fifty years, driven to fury. Prue, he was sure, would be just as interested.

"I'll bring her to you," he murmured to the Seer as he opened the magicked wooden door.

He closed the door firmly before turning to Prue, who sat paging through a grimoire she'd found-well, at the moment Cole neither knew nor cared where. He cleared his throat, and nodded at the door. "The Seer has had another vision. You wondered what your sisters would say to you turning. She's got part of the answer."

Prue looked up at him thoughtfully as she rose to her feet. "And she's got our fates in her hands. Let's not keep her waiting. Come on." He didn't fail to notice the glint of anticipation in her eyes.

Skirting the Source's chamber, they returned to the lair of the Seer.

The sight of a large rock-formed pool in the center of the room greeted them. The Seer stood by its far side, and Prue couldn't help but be entranced by the sight of the demon's eyes. Red light beamed from them into the pool's water-like substance, where an image was slowly taking shape.

"Piper," Prue murmured. Cole, who had stayed behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. Who he was reassuring, he wasn't certain. Prue, however, only gazed at the image as it shifted: Piper transforming into a fury before them. Whatever worry Cole had (reawaked sympathies?) he needn't have, however. The scene shifted again, to a row of tomb markers at the new mausoleum. Piper, literally Furious, raged in front of one of them, on which the three observers could just make out an inscription: _Prudence Halliwell 1970 -2001. _

Before Piper's accusations could register, Prue zeroed in on the inscription. "That's it?" Her face contorted in a snarl of disbelief beyond empathy or reason. Tomb inscriptions were always briefer than those on graves. She knew this, and yet -

"Who does she think she is? That ungrateful little whiny nagging brat. How dare she!" Without knowing it, she clenched her fists at her sides. And without anyone knowing, blue streaks of energy flickered along her palm lines - though only for an instant.

Only Cole was watching the Seer in time to catch the flash of - triumph, yes, but not only that. She was definitely up to something. Prue, of course, may as well have thought the Seer was a piece of conjured furniture. All she saw was Piper and the inscription. Even the presence of Phoebe and … Paige, was it, did not cross her mind.

"She has no right to be angry with me," Prue muttered. "Not after _everything _I've ever done for her." She backed away from the image, now of Piper sinking to the floor, pleading with Prue to return and sobbing away her fury. "And there is no way I'll ever go back."

She was still muttering when they returned to their suite. Cole had looked to the Seer for … anything, any clue or indication of her plans. And all he'd gotten was a mouthed, "Soon" before they were ushered out.

"'No way you'd ever go back'?" he echoed. Pulled out of her reverie, she whirled to face him. "You did, though. Twice." Putting his hands on her shoulders, he looked her in the eye. "I am not letting you go. Now, you got your answer. Question is, can you _let them go_ and focus on the Seer?"

She looked at him, put her hands on his wrists, and muttered, "What did she say to you?"

He raised an eyebrow. "All of it? Are you sure?"

Shrugging his hands away, she tilted her head sarcastically. "You want me in, you tell me everything."

He'd known she would say something like that. Still, there could be some advantage to doing it this way.

"She told me I couldn't expect her to believe a Charmed One should carry the twice-blessed child. Or," he couldn't avoid her eyes, "that I would want you to carry the child."

"Well." She held out her arm. "Do I look like a Charmed One to you?"

He considered this. The vesica piscis said no, but there was still something in her eyes.

"You don't look like a demon. Bo Lightfeather could see it, in my eyes. I can't see it in yours. And if I can't…"

She finished for him, "Neither can the Seer or the Source." The size-you-up look was back. "So, what do I - what do _we - _do about it?"

He took her hands. "We train you to let go of the surface, and to survive down here. Whatever's holding you back - "

She interrupted, confident in her dismissal. "_Nothing _is holding me back." And to demonstrate, she sent a glass figurine on their coffee table flying. It shattered against the far wall.

Cole only raised an eyebrow. "Objects are one thing. You still have - the stench of humanity on you. You're still attached to _something _on the surface."

She couldn't meet his gaze. Pressing his advantage, he continued softly, "Not to your sisters, of course. Not even to that sense of responsibility you're weighted down by." Prue shot him a sharp glance, while laughing weakly and trying to turn away. "No," he went on, "It's something else."

To her trembling back he asked, "You're holding onto him, aren't you?" Her slight intake of breath proved he'd hit his mark, but he went ahead to press the point: "Morris's partner. What-was-his-name. Trudeau."

She turned only a fraction, and the accusation had all the calculated bite he'd hoped for. "Is that how you won her over." Her laugh was brittle. "Knowing things she didn't, sensing things, using that and convincing her you meant no harm by it?" Another roll of her eyes and she made for their kitchen.

He called to her now-retreating back. "He was your high school sweetheart, wasn't he?

Everything about him and what he represents - your mortal childhood, that's what you're holding onto."

As he'd hoped, her first reaction was to clench her fists. But she was also standing very still now. The silence lengthened. Then, she whispered to the far wall, "Tempus was the first demon I truly hated."

"Even though," and his voice is like velvet; she can't help but shudder at the silky roughness of it, "even though he was simply doing you a favor. Couldn't you see? Trudeau had to die - the exposure threat was too great for either side."

Logic, clear-eyed logic, could be heard in her voice when she answered. But she seemed to cling to it a little too tightly, like a beloved stuffed rabbit. "Why didn't the Source ever send Tempus after my father? Why not go after Morris once he knew the truth?"

He moved then to stand just behind her. "Only Trudeau's death would have stopped the threat and hurt you enough to throw you _that_ off kilter." She tensed, tightening her fists. The streaks of blue light up every line before they blink out. "The Source almost had you." She seemed very far away, as though she only half heard him, and her silence let him press his case.

"You nearly gave your book away, and now you are holding yourself back from power," his hands rested on her shoulders, "all for the memory of a mortal who never understood you, and never truly loved you."

Cole tilted her chin toward him, and saw that he had finally struck pay dirt. Her eyes are glistening with tears. Prue's voice, however, hasn't quite broken yet. "He understood me better than anyone. And he loved me enough to die for me."

As she blinks away the moisture he turns her to face him and takes hold of each of her hands. "But not enough to live for you, to understand and accept your secret. Not enough to love you for this," a kiss on one palm, "or this" a kiss on the other.

"He tried - his dreams, and mine, and just -" she spoke to herself as much as to Cole. Her fists clenched again. Small blue sparks jumped from between her fingers.

"The timing was never right." He doesn't fully smirk as he says it. She nods, and he goes on. "But the setting wasn't right either. You aren't the picket fence type, Prue." It was like looking through a viewfinder at herself outraged, to know that he _knew_ - her thoughts, dreams, fears - but not to care very much here and now. "Accept that. Accept that he had to die."

He drew her to him, kissed each tear-damp eyelid, and breathed in her ear. "Embrace the hunger to have done it yourself."

Hunger for the kill, bloodlust, demonic motivation - whatever you called it, it slid into Prue that night. All through the dinner that they ate, as usual, in relative silence, all Prue could think of was being nine, ten, eleven years old, and how Grams, who never let up, never gave her a spare moment to be a kid, would watch especially closely at dinner - to make Prue was setting a good example for Piper and Phoebe. She had hated her grandmother then. Even hated her mother for dying and taking most of Prue's childhood with her.

Her fist remained balled under the table as they ate - lasagna, she supposed, although she barely noticed. Cole would occasionally glance her way, but he said nothing. Left her to her thoughts, which were mainly that he was right. If Andy had truly loved her, all of her, he would have found a way to make them work, but even then, was she really the type to settle down into domestic responsibility? Was she like her mother? No!

Was she someone who needed the kind of knight in shining armor rescue that he'd insisted on providing? Would she even be here if she was? The thoughts, the accusations, the questions swirled in her head, and the feeling in her chest was icy now. "Frigid", she smiled to herself, glancing at Cole as they cleared the table.

And all the while, beneath her clenched fist, the energy strengthened.

It appeared fully formed while she was brushing her teeth before bed. Anger at Piper, Phoebe, and remembered rage toward Vinceres and even Cole congealed, and in her palm glowed a small blue-white ball of energy.

She didn't call out to Cole - simply walked up behind him as he was undressing and cleared her throat. He spun around, and a truly sinister grin began to spread across his face. "Did you know, I've had a stray nightmare or two that began exactly," his eyes traced the sight of her in her grey slip, holding the energy ball, "like this?"

The energy ball glows between them. Prue takes that in. "I always give as good as I get," she murmurs.

"As evil," Cole replied. He leaned over, pinched her fingers together, and as the energy ball snuffed out, took a hard look at his wife's face.

"The Source has that look," he told her, pushing her down onto the bed. "And now we can say the same about you."


	12. The New Normal

Paige didn't expect any grand gestures after the incident at the mausoleum, but still, when Piper showed up at her desk at South Bay Social Services the next day with a basket of homemade baked goods? Paige was torn - there was her gratitude, and then there was her fear that either Mr. Cowen would decide to check up on her right then, or that Piper wasn't just here with a peace and appreciation offering.

Even with the boost in productivity and the discovery of the letters, Paige found herself feeling uneasy about casting the spell. Especially since she had a nagging feeling that hearing Piper's true feelings at the mausoleum might have been part of it.

But then she heard Piper reply to Jon Kemmel, the office CPA and a guy who was kind of protective of Paige in a big brotherly way, when he asked the inevitable "who are you, again?" He was trailing her as she made her way to Paige's desk, trying to avoid bumping into the large wicker basket.

Piper set the basket down on the desk, and looked across it at Paige. "I'm her sister."

The conservatory. Phoebe didn't realize she'd been avoiding it until she'd seen Paige at the wooden cabinet, and only now, with Piper safe, did she wonder. Why was Paige crying? What had she been looking at?

And there was only one way to find out, of course.

After Piper left the house the next day, Phoebe finally worked up the courage. Everything looked the same, which both comforted her and unnerved her. It was reflex, really, that made her look at the spot where Prue had died. But she forced herself not to look away. She had faced this fear so many times already, what was one more?

A spring breeze blew through the branches of the trees in the side yard, just through the windows, and Phoebe shivered despite herself. But thinking of Barbas now made her think of her mom's words in the Book of Shadows. She took a deep breath.

"We're okay, you know," she addressed the windows. "Even Piper. Yesterday was just…well, you know better than I do what she was like after Grams. We're okay, and we'll be okay. Please don't worry." She smiled, even as her eyes grew moist. "Rest in peace, sis. You've earned it."

It was as she was turning back toward the doorway to the rest of the house that Phoebe realized. The cabinet was in her peripheral vision, and she remembered putting the many letters between her mom and Sam that she couldn't fit in the scrapbook into a box that she'd put in the cabinet for safekeeping. Really curious now, Phoebe went over and opened the cabinet. And there on the shelf was a single folded note dated February 10, 1977. By the time she finished reading it, tears were streaming down her face.

She walked back into the kitchen, sniffling. Tea, maybe that would help. She knew Piper had only gotten through the funeral by mainlining chamomile. She had just put water on to boil when the phone rang. Of all people in the world, it was her father.

He'd had to fly out to a meeting in Phoenix right after the funeral, and so he was just calling now to see how the two of them were holding up. _And Prue used to think my timing sucked_, Phoebe thought, trying not to laugh and start crying again.

After assuring him that yes, they were doing as well as could be expected, Phoebe got off the phone with him and called P3. She drank half a cup of the too-hot tea waiting on the line for someone to find her sister, who, of course, had been up half the previous night baking her peace offering. When Phoebe finally got a hold of Piper, she got right to it. "Dad just called. Wanted to know how we are. And let's just say I'm holding in my hand a really good reason, in Mom's handwriting, to sit him down and tell him what's happened." Hearing the stifled curse on the other end of the line, Phoebe suddenly remembered Piper was surrounded by liquor bottles. "So, uh, why don't you hand some work off to your capable assistants and come home so we can figure out how to handle this."

Piper agreed, begrudgingly, and then said, "Wait. Should we call Paige?"

Phoebe shook her head at the tea kettle. "Let's just have a conversation, the three of us. The news alone will be hard enough."

After they'd called him back and told him that they had something they needed to tell him when he got back to San Francisco, and no, they could not just tell him over the phone, they'd see him when he got back, Piper asked to see the letter.

"February 10, 1977." Her eyes are already bleary when she looked up at Phoebe. "That was right after our last Christmas with Dad…." Phoebe nodded, torn. She thought she had her feelings nailed down one second, and then they'd shift. And Piper…

Piper, whose eyes have skipped down, read aloud, _"I love this baby already, and I love that she's yours." _

And she remembered how every time she and Dan had a moment to themselves, there would be a crisis, there would be Leo, and there would be doubts. And then there were a whole different set of doubts after Dan, but thinking back, she could admire her mother's clarity, and long for the freedom she must have seized to just say it.

The words are out of her mouth before anything can stop them, "We've been trying, Leo and I, since we moved into the master bedroom, we've been trying to…" She looked down at the letter again. "If Dad can't handle Paige as our sister, I don't know what I'll …"

Phoebe reached out and pulled her into a hug. "I know, sweetie, I know."

Victor had needed to get away. That he'd needed to leave his family again to do so, well, the cynic in him dismissed this as just the latest in the quarter-century long list of ways he'd failed them.

His eldest girl was gone. And somehow the news had just unblocked a psychological dam within him: memories he'd tried so hard to forget, over the years. From Patty flinging a record in a high, unnatural arc across the room, and as he'd looked on astonished, saying, "She's telekinetic, like my mother," to his first sight of her beautiful, large solemn blue eyes, to guiding her as she learned to walk, to how his joy was magnified when Patty became pregnant again and the news widened those eyes ("A sister! Thank you Daddy!"). Oh, yes, he did also remember how those eyes had looked at him reproachfully while his mother-in-law had told him in no uncertain terms where to get off. _"Your back walking out the door," _Prue had said. And then, over two decades later, they'd opened that door again. He'd been so thankful for the sight of the poised, confident young woman he'd gotten to know then. A woman scarred, certainly, by what he'd done, but with the strength to go on. Like her mother.

There in the middle of the desert, Victor struggled to see the glass half full. _She died too damn young_, he kept thinking. _I wanted the chance to give her away. I wanted to see her work, to see her win that Pulitzer. Grandkids…_

His ringing cell phone ended that thought.

They sat with him by the Manor's fireplace. Piper, still getting used to speaking up first, began, "Dad, you remember that strange girl at Prue's funeral?"

He looked back and forth between them, and settled on Phoebe. "The one who gave you that premonition that made you collapse?" She nodded. He, less certain, nodded back.

"I saw her get attacked by the same demon that killed Prue," she continued. "We followed her, and that's what happened. Except…" Phoebe looked to Piper.

"Except this girl, this witch, she saved herself."

His total confusion showed. "And you two called me here to tell me this….?"

Phoebe's turn. "She orbed out of the way of Shax's energy ball, Dad. She's half-witch, and half-whitelighter. And then we found out…"

"Wait." He held up a hand. "How do you _know _she's a witch? Have you seen her power? She could just be a regular whitelighter, couldn't she?"

Phoebe opened her mouth. Closed it They _hadn't_ seen Paige use telekinesis. Yet. But…

Piper said, remarkably steadily, "She came to us, Dad, with some information that is pretty convincing." Phoebe looked at her in alarm. Piper ignored her.

"Mom's name is on her birth certificate." Even as his eyes widened and he couldn't look at them, she pressed on. Paige's truth, _her _truth, and both of her families depended on it. "It's dated August 2, 1977."

Phoebe felt a rush of sympathy for her father then. They'd just buried Prue, and now he had to confront this slap in the face. Still, she knew what Piper was doing - laying everything out all at once, so there'd be no bombshells later. Her sister had learned. "You're right," she conceded. "We haven't seen her wiccan power yet. But we've seen that she can do magic." It was like she'd taken away his last sight of light in a long tunnel. And that hit her like a stack of bricks.

She moved to sit beside him - the story of her life. Put her arm around his shoulders. "She helped us vanquish Shax, Dad. And we need her."

"You _need_ her?" His disbelief was wrenching to hear all on its own. But then, "You _need_ her to _replace _your sister so that you two can keep risking your lives on an almost daily basis?"

Even Phoebe didn't have a good response to that.

Maybe muffins made the morning, or maybe she was just riding the high that comes after stress is relieved, but Paige was having a productive day. Her caseload for the week was down to two, and since it _was _only Tuesday, she decided to take her lunch break and check in with, well, her sisters.

Her first clue should have been the Ford Taurus in the driveway. Her next clue should have been actually needing to ring the bell. When Piper answered the door with a strained and falsely cheery expression on her face while blocking the doorway with her body, she finally realized something was up, but only when she heard the middle aged male voice say, "Oh, is that _her_?" did she consider turning around and getting back in her car.

She recognized him, of course, from the funeral -the older man in a suit sitting next to Phoebe, looking for all the world like his reason for being had just disappeared. And as he came out of the living room now trailed by Phoebe, she put a label to the situation, the one she'd been taught never to use about any of the kids she helped.

_I'm his wife's bastard, and it doesn't matter that I didn't know that or that I didn't grow up with his daughters. And magical destiny be damned; I'm the living reminder of his marriage falling apart. _

How many times had she seen the clues to a similar dynamic in the case files at work? She'd tried on all the backstories to adoption that she'd seen with those kids, tried to see how much they'd fit. But this reality rang far more true. And there was only one was to face it: like the pro she was and wanted to be.

"Mr. Bennett," she drew the name from where she'd committed the funeral program to memory, "My name is Paige Matthews. I'm so sorry for your loss." She deemed "sir" to be overkill at the last second, and glanced at Piper and Phoebe. They'd gone still at her words, and now all eyes were on Victor.

And all Victor could suddenly do was stare. How old was she, he asked himself. Twenty-two, twenty-three? Twenty-three, they'd said. She looked so much like Patty had at that age.

So much like Prue, in the few months he'd been back in their lives. And he saw, looking at her, that she had that same look in her eyes that Phoebe and Piper had had when he'd first contacted them again. The look that said, _now my family is more complete. _

She'd been looking for her family, he told himself. Whatever questions (and he had plenty of questions) and issues he had with Patty and … this girl's father, who was he to deny his girls family, especially right now?

He reached out his hand, and, with less hesitation than even she was expecting, she took it. "Thank you, Paige. It is wonderful to meet you. Please, call me Victor."

The sighs of relief were almost audible, though everyone pretended not to notice. Piper asked if he would stay for lunch, and then hustled Phoebe and Paige into the kitchen.

"I'm so relieved that went as well as it did I'm not even going to be annoyed at your bad timing," Piper told Paige as she got out the salad mixing bowl. Phoebe, who did a mental double-take every time Piper acted like this towards Paige, got out cans of tuna and mayonnaise. Paige, seeing how seamlessly they worked together, fidgeted, at a loss.

There was silence for a few minutes, and then she said, "I just want to respect what he's been through. I don't want him to think, just because of magic, that I could ever…"

Piper and Phoebe exchanged a look, but said nothing. They simply handed Paige the salad and took the food into the dining room.

The last time they'd sat here with their father, Piper remembered, was her rehearsal dinner. How things had changed. She smiled across at Paige. They had landed on their feet. And if there was one thing she and Phoebe knew how to do, it was grieve and endure.

Victor, unsure, had simply gone with the old stand by, asking Paige about her job. _Social work, _he thought. And then, _it suits her. _

Phoebe watched that interaction between her father and her sister and smiled, although, for her as for Piper, it brought back bittersweet memories. _What a motley bunch we'd made_, she thought. And she was just deciding that she really could still think of that as a good memory when her father apparently decided to give Paige a chance to actually eat something.

"So, Phoebe," he said. "I read the obituary you wrote for Prue. And I was impressed. You've graduated now, sweetheart, and I think you really have a skill you could put to use."

She would remind herself later that he never did say the word "work". But it had been clear enough what he meant. And the comparison of "Prue", "work", and "look at your sister, Phoebe, and follow her example" was both so hard-wired into her as a trigger for "race to the nearest exit" and so very confusingly new coming from her father, the man she ran away to find, that Phoebe was struck as still as if Piper could freeze her.

Unfortunately, her hold on her water glass was not so solid. It slipped from her fingers only slow enough for Paige, sitting across from her, to put her hands out and shout, "Watch your _glass!" _Only the sheer pain on her father's face kept her from grinning with distracted joy to see blue orbs coalesce around her falling glass and carry it onto Paige's palm.

Later, when Phoebe remembered the moment, she was struck by how fitting it was. A water glass. And that's when she knew she and Piper needed to show Paige the lake.


	13. It's the Same Old Song

"It's the Same Old Song"

Soon came about two weeks later. Random demons had made remarks that whole time - whenever Prue had left their suite to explore, get exercise, and flex her rapidly developing demonic senses, she would pass one demon or another sneering, "Belthazor's whore!", "enjoying the life of a concubine?", "Is _that_ the reward for disloyalty these days" and on and on. She kept her head up, but kept quiet, knowing she was outnumbered.

She also decided not to tell Cole, at least, not right away - what could he do that wouldn't compromise their tenuous position further? If she kept her "eyes on the prize" (how ridiculous a whitelighter's arrogant guidance should come back to her _now_)she'd be okay. So it was that she spent hours in random caverns hurling energy balls, while Cole stayed in their suite and studied his law books.

She'd asked why, of course, and he only winked. "You'll see."

And so it was that he had been reading, alone, when two red-rimmed eyes appeared to the side of him. Klea materialized a moment later. "Hard at work, I see."

His face, even turned from her, was unreadable. "Come by to check up on me?"

"Never," and this is a whisper, a caress. Cole rose to his feet and faced her. "Come to see if you can be persuaded to regain your senses."

He played along - the internal politics of the brotherhood have always demanded this game, and it is second nature to his demonic half. "Betray the Source again? For the Brotherhood?" His eyes raked her body. "For you?"

Her eyes seemed to smolder. "For true evil. For the Seer's vision of a world we rule. Think of it, Belthazor! Pure evil triumphant."

His patience slipped then. "You have it, it grows by the day." There is ice in his voice. Her lips pulled back in in a snarl of revulsion.

"From a witch? From a Charmed One? No." She sized him up, eyes full of cunning. "Whatever bastard she bears will be theirs, not ours." Cole's lips pulled back into their own snarled response before he can check himself.

"In the fiber of your demonic being you do believe that."

She has closed the distance between them without him recognizing it. "You bedded her on the Source's orders, not because it would advance our side." Her head cocked to the side. "Perhaps you wished to punish her and her sister for what they did to you." He met her gaze, unflinching and yet still unreadable. Klea smiled. "Either way, we have this opportunity to achieve true greatness for evil. Let us make this child together. Lie with me, Belthazor."

There were suddenly in Cole's mind two very vivid images. One was from the evening of V-J Day, strolling along the embarcadero and whispering to Klea, "Well, you win some, you lose some." And the pure lust that had shot through him when she replied, "There are always consolation prizes." And they had grabbed a passing young mortal woman, pulled her into an alley, and Klea had forced her to her knees, and let Cole have his way with her, before both of them took out their athames and stabbed her through the heart.

The second was his bravado in the face of Prue and her sisters discovering him in the trap around the Halliwells' Book of Shadows. He had been in superb blustery form. "That's illegal! I ought to have you arrested!" and so on. And she had only stared him down, never flinching once. It had been … novel. Intriguing, for all his pretense to insult. He had killed witches who hadn't defended their _children _with that steady fierceness.

Klea had a point, though, and they both knew it - any child Prue bore him would have surface ties, just like he'd told her.

It was his demonic nature that gripped Klea's hands, then. "Alright," he said simply. "Let's seize the chance."

They come together in a familiar melding, honed from long practice. Her lips on his, so cool and bracing, the feel of her body fitting comfortably against his, and everything simple, straightforward - all suppress his human insistence on remembering his wedding vows.

Only the sound of Prue's conjured key in the suite's conjured door stilled them. "You've overstayed your welcome, Klea." Cole gestured her away.

As she faded out, she kissed him. "Go back to your little game of house, then."

Only his previous experience as a double agent enabled him to greet Prue like nothing was amiss. Her scrutiny, her wonderful damnable suspicious and observant nature, had begun to lighten in recent days, and he had been concerned. With the taste of Klea on his lips, however, he simply looked forward to dinner, their customary time of simple quiet conviviality.

Prue, however, had something on her mind. "If the Source is still waiting on us," she gestured with her fork, "why haven't we been dragged before him again? I'd have expected _some_ further arm-twisting."

Cole shrugged, seemingly nonchalant. "The Source is used to playing a long game. He doesn't like it, but he knows how to be patient. Especially for a prize this big."

She considered that. "And the Seer?" Even as she said it, Cole realized he should have grasped the significance of Klea's visit. She never had been one to act independently. It was all up to him, though, whether or not the Seer's little scheme succeeded. And that, well. He could manipulate Klea, hold her off. He _could, _or…. He considered Prue. How sure he had been, that she'd crack like a nut under the weight of Vinceres' curse. How, he had learned from the Triad, she and Phoebe had a history of romantic … rivalry, for lack of a better term. He'd seen her roll her eyes at Phoebe's eagerness when he'd first approached the Charmed Ones. He weighed these lessons. Aloud, he says only, "We just don't know enough about what she's planning. About all we can do, until you start showing, is lay low." His face quirked into an ironic half smile.

Prue held his gaze a moment, and he almost thought she saw through the jocularity. But then she shrugs, a what-can-we-do gesture. "So we lay low." As if that settled that, she rose and began clearing the table. Cole, deep in thought, just watched her. She could take nearly anything - had, in fact, and was more aware of the losses than Phoebe had been, or could be. His demon self hissed, _"This too, this too. Make her suffer this too!"_

Clearing his throat, he stood to help. Prue went straight to the bedroom and fell into bed afterwards; her training wiped her out. Watching her, Klea's words come back to him. "Whatever bastard she bears…" Had Klea meant to mock him, or did the glorious vision of evil and her lust make her forget?

Memories overwhelmed him: he and Klea, but also other images from his youth, memories of his mother, who he hadn't thought about in years, and even flashes of the one or two impressions he had of his father.

Prue shifting beside him broke him out of his reverie. His eyes fell on the vesica piscis. Gently, ever so gently, he reached out and traced it with his index finger. The glow came up just as it had before. His smile was triumphant. Yet as he leaned down to kiss her forehead, another scrap of memory came up unbidden. A careworn oldtime lullaby.

He drifted off to sleep with the melody running through his mind.

Three days pass, with no sign of Klea. By unspoken consent Prue had begun to use Cole's athame in her training exercises - both offensive and defensive.

For his part, his studies keep his mind focused, barely. Move forward like nothing had happened. Nothing's changed. So he thought to himself. The Source still has you over a barrel. Betray him again and - he didn't even finish the thought. Klea was right, though, on the merits, on their history, even on how disingenuous his motives looked.

Were.

And as if his thoughts had summoned her, she appeared beside him again. "Trouble in paradise? I _know _I'm not interrupting a thing right now."

"Forget it, Klea." He pulled an open book toward him, made a show of returning to his reading.

"Forget what, Belthazor? How you told me before you left what a thrill it would be to force the eldest Charmed One to her knees and have her service you before you slit her throat? What glory would come to the Brotherhood because you had killed the Charmed Ones? How could I forget?"

He was on his feet again in an instant. "This," he gestured around the room, his voice ominously quiet, "is the Source's plan. You and the Seer defy him by not following along."

She raised a nonplussed eyebrow. "Forgive me, my brother. Perhaps I had forgotten that your completely unwavering loyalty to the Source made you an expert on such matters."

He took a step toward her. "Sarcasm doesn't become you, Klea."

Her smile was wry as she came toward him. "Perhaps. But what about this?" Her lips, her cool tempting lips are against his a second later. It is second nature, to his demon self, to pull and push her back onto a sofa. To take stock of every shadow of every self-healed scar, and to work his way between her legs.

This time, the sound of Prue's key doesn't still them. Under him, Klea murmured, "Let her see us, Belthazor. Let her suffer." And softly, as she could nearly read his thoughts, "Do you remember V-J Day?" The slow grin on his face makes her laugh.

And that laughter was what Prue first noticed when she entered the room. She came around the sofas, and the shifts in emotion across her face - he wished, in that moment, to have been able to see her under the empathic curse. As it was, though, she bottled herself up quickly, and took a step back. Only then did Cole see the hilt of his athame sticking out of a leg pocket on the yoga-style pants Prue wore to train.

He could see the blood lust in her eyes before Prue herself did - and certainly before Klea could take it seriously. She, trying to prolong the moment, kissed him again. The next thing either of them were aware of was the zing of an energy ball, sailing low over the sofa. Cole got to his feet. He looked Prue in the eye. "Leave, Klea."

With a sneer, she shimmered away.

The flint of Prue's eyes has softened, but he doesn't mistake that for defeat. She has the hunched look of a cornered animal, gathering itself to strike. "Say something," he finally snapped.

Eyebrows raised, she drew out his athame. Pressed the hilt into his hand. "Here." Her eyes are like smoke and granite as she stepped toward him. "Since I mean so little to you." And she lifted her chin.

He stared at the hollow at the base of her throat, reminded suddenly that yes, Klea had been exactly right about what he'd told her before the Triad mission.

A beat, and he has a restraining hold on her arm. He raised the athame, thinking that this was fitting. He'd wanted Phoebe's death to be cloak and dagger, but Prue? He had wanted to look her in the eyes when he killed her. She was the type who wanted to face danger square on, after all. And sure enough, only bravery showed on her face as she tilted her head back. The blade edge was at her throat before the incongruity fully hit home.

The woman who fought the Angel of Death, even invisible, on behalf of her seven year old self was giving herself up like a sheep to the slaughter. How often had he thought, as a young demon, that the Angel of Death was evil, simply because of his father? There had been such a comic pathos to that whole incident, and he only fully saw it now. Her bravery now isn't a mask - she has given herself up, resigned herself completely to annihilation. At hishand.

His grip does not waver; it slides, deliberately, and he draws blood before he hurls the athame across the room. It embeds itself next to the door.

She closed the gap between them in an instant. Cole felt the trickle of hot blood against his face as Prue pressed her lips firmly against his. Without throwing herself into it, all of her is there - the fierce bravery and the vulnerability, her composure before his lawyerly high-handedness and before the Source, and the vixen he'd been rather astonished to find in his marital bed.

"Damn you," she whispered when they came apart. "Damn you for all of it."

Heedless of the blood, he cupped her cheek. "Damn me to hell. _Klea_ I should have seen coming."

She covers her hand with his, draws it away from her cheek. She contemplated the sight of her blood on his hand before she said, "Promise me, Cole. I need to know your past. I", and he marveled at how familiar this sounded, "_deserve_ to know about your past. You want me in, you tell me everything."

"Done." He'd been planning to, of course. Eventually. So he told himself.

Her gaze shifted to where his athame is sticking out of their wall. "And promise me that once we expose her, I get to kill her." His answering laughter was chilling.


	14. The Lady in the Lake

"The Lady in the Lake"

A/N: A quote in this chapter is adapted from 1x17, "That '70s Episode".

Piper found it easier, after her father had left, to focus on the lead up to Paige's grand finale. An afternoon at work barely kept her mind from replaying the image of Paige moving that glass, and the accompanying pain on her father's face. "You choked," she said, as she and Phoebe finally climbed the stairs to bed that night. "He was asking a perfectly good question, and you choked."

Phoebe tried to suppress a scowl, not quite succeeding as they came to the second floor. "A perfectly good question would have been 'so how's the club doing, Piper?' You know, keep the focus on the stable part of our lives right now."

"Phoebe..." It's a weary plea to not open the can of worms they just spent so much time stuffing back down, and the sort of plea for peace in the family that Piper Halliwell has made all her life. _I don't know how to do anything else._

Phoebe plupped herself down on the top stair, and sighed. "I can't do it, Piper. I know he meant well, and I guess I'm even flattered a little. But I don't know how I'm supposed to go out in the world and try to find 'a way to use my talent' when I just lost," she really did choke up then, and Piper quickly sat down beside her, "the one person who could've really guided me and understood and -

Piper pulled her close, hugging Phoebe against her side, the way they had comforted each other when they were little. "And what am I, chopped liver?" And then they were laughing and crying, clinging to each other. When her sobs eased a little, Piper said softly, "Do you remember when she got her very first paycheck from the museum?"

A teary laugh. "How could I forget? She wouldn't talk about anything else for days."

Piper nodded, wistfully. "When she got home, though, Grams was giving me an earful about the mortgage and the water bill. She walked right into it. And she just took out her paycheck and handed it over."

Phoebe sat up slightly. "I must've been off doing something."

Piper squeezed her shoulder. "The point is, the club is _fine, _Phoebe. Go out and figure out how to do what you're good at. What you love doing." They looked sidelong at each other, leaving unspoken,  
_What Prue didn't have the freedom to do until almost too late. _"That's what she would have wanted, what she would have told you to do."

Phoebe nodded, her face streaked with tears.

Two days, two blissfully normal regular days, passed before Paige called them again. That is, of course, she called the Manor on her lunch break and Phoebe picked up.

"I need to confess something." She doesn't know what rule she broke, but her disgust with herself for going behind their backs has only grown. The little tale tumbled out, and Paige finished by saying, "I'm not used to, I don't know, coordinating my personal life before I do something. But I don't do deception very well, either."

"Well, that's good to know, Paige." And even as the sarcastic words came out of her mouth, she thought, _Who does she remind you of, hm? _"But we're a trio. Maybe Piper and I do it because we don't know any different, but it's who you are, too."

On her cell at the little coffee shop she always ducked into when she had the cash, Paige merely nodded along to Phoebe's words, until high pitched shouts caught her ear. She turned her head, and by the entrance to the cafe two little girls were intensely discussing the stickers on a notebook one of them carried. (You don't have bears. Why don't you have bears? 'Cuz I'd rather have stars!) She watched them for a few beats, until she heard Phoebe's voice say, "Paige?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here. What were you saying about the - ?" Some instinct she couldn't name made her lower her voice.

Phoebe raised her eyebrows to the empty living room. "The wiccan rede? Yeah, I really think we need to have that discussion in person. And I had an idea I wanted to discuss with you anyway."

They agreed Paige would come over that night. Phoebe hung up feeling like she was gradually finding a balance again.

Telling Piper about her idea late that afternoon didn't prove quite as difficult as Phoebe had feared. She hastened to add, "After we give her a serious lecture on personal gain, I mean." They were leaning on the kitchen counter, where Piper had started a list of all the final things they needed to resolve for Prue.

"Show her the lake." The idea made even more sense when Piper said it, and Phoebe was encouraged enough to say, "Maybe even start teaching her all of the," she waved her hand at the four gallon brewing and cooking pot and at the cabinets full of cooking and potion herbs, "knowledge that Grams gave you. You know, what's positive about our magic."

Piper nodded thoughtfully. "But first things first."

"Go easy on her, okay?" Phoebe laughed a little. "She definitely committed personal gain with her heart in a better place than we ever..."

Piper rolled her eyes, but laughed too, fondly remembering. "Sometimes I almost think we're _still _dealing with the consequences of that love spell."

"Okay." Paige sat across from them over dinner that night. "Nothing I do with magic can be for my personal benefit."

They nodded. Phoebe added, "Not even when it would also benefit someone else." She consciously avoided Piper's eyes. "Or even when it would teach someone a lesson." Paige looked up, quickly.

Phoebe, curious about the story behind that look, only said, "The wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing."

Piper, wanting to avoid discussion of _that _topic at all costs, rose to clear their plates. "Besides, we really don't need to go looking for trouble to deal with. It," she turned into the kitchen, and gave a slight shriek, "It usually finds us!"

Phoebe and Paige were hurrying into the kitchen an instant later. Out of the sink had come a young Asian-American woman, dressed for a martial arts lesson and brandishing a long thin sword, which she sheathed at her waist as soon as she saw the three of them. Warily, they inched toward her. She extended her hands in supplication.

"My name is Su Lin. I am the daughter of the _shaolin _master Chen Guang. Before he died my father embued his most prized weapon, the dragon blade, with his great gifts." She stopped, and looked at them. "

Phoebe recovered her voice first. "His great gifts?" Piper was still eyeing her sink in suspicious awe

The woman, Su Lin, nodded gravely. "My father had the ability to use water as a looking glass into other worlds. He developed it through many years of work. The blade can also trap human souls. It was a great inspiration to his students."

Telling herself the woman needed a towel, Phoebe started toward the laundry room. "Then one of these students got greedy." She doesn't see the impressed look Paige directed at her back.

They guided her to the living room, and she said, once she was settled on the sofa, "Yen-Lo was one of the best students my father had, but he always assumed he was _the_ best. He assumed he could do whatever he wished with my father's teachings. When my father passed him over for master, he swore vengence. When I saw what he had done, I challenged him with the dragon blade, but I did not suceed in killing him." She gestured as if to say, "and here I am."

_Damn, _Paige thought to herself, looking from Phoebe to Piper. _After-school special much? _

"You want us to find him and ... ." Piper was matter-of-fact; she couldn't, no, she just plain did not want to have to deal with this, their first true innocent after Prue's death. _Get it over with._ The better to return to healing themselves.

"Yen-Lo is holding my father in the mystical region between life and death where souls wait for reincarnation, a realm where all mortal wounds are healed." To Piper's baffled look she smiled slightly and said, "Limbo."

Trying to surreptitiously glance toward the kitchen, Piper replied. "Do you have a way to get there?"

Su Lin shook her head.

"Come on." They went upstairs to the book.

Phoebe and Paige ducked through Chinatown shop after Chinatown shop, searching for powdered toadstool. That was the ingredient that would help them brew a potion to transport them to Limbo. Or so Piper hoped.

Phoebe, frankly, was just glad for the chance to talk to Paige, just the two of them. "So," she said conversationally, "Forget the exciting stuff. About ninety percent of magic is plain old legwork."

The third shop they tried finally did have toadstool in stock. As they were exiting the shop, Phoebe handed the bag with the herb to Paige. "Start looking it over. We're going to actually be using it in just a few minutes."

But only a few seconds later, they passed some workers hosing down the sidewalk. The water had pooled by the curb. They started across California Street without a second thought, and halfway, Yen-Lo appeared behind them. "Su Lin ran to witches. Typical. She never had what it took." His hands were around Phoebe's wrists before his presence registered, and he jumped back into the puddle, pulling her with him, before Paige or even Phoebe herself could appreciate what he'd done.

"Phoebe!" Paige called. Self-conscious only of the fact that she looked crazy shouting at a water puddle, she glanced around her. The sun had set an hour ago, and the street was almost entirely empty.

She took a deep breath, and stuck out her hand. "Here goes nothing. Puddle!" Light blue ripples appeared on the surface,of the puddle, but she was definitely not sucked into Limbo. Next she tried to orb, and even to her amazement, she actually did, but directing herself into the puddle proved impossible.

_Okay, two options down, but I've still got one. _This time, she orbed straight for the Manor.

Materializing in the dining room, she sighed relief and then called, "Piper! I've got the toadstool, but we have a problem."

She could see Piper was making an effort not to run from the kitchen, with Su Lin at her heels.

And even through her fear, she thought, _How to Handle Innocents 101. Nice one, Piper._

"What, Paige?" Again, the effort to project calm collectedness in her voice.

_Out with it. _"Yen-Lo ambushed us. He grabbed Phoebe, and pulled her into limbo." She reached out, desperate suddenly for Piper to know she had tried. "I tried everything I could think of to get in, but the puddle didn't move."

Piper, suddenly as calm and focused as Paige had ever seen her, turned to Su Lin. "I think we've found a safer way in." The woman began to protest, but Piper shook her head. "You came to us for a reason.

So now you need to trust us." She looked at Paige. "The potion's almost ready."

After adding the toadstool, the potion turned a lime green. Paige looked doubtfully at Piper, who simply handed her a glass. "We've drunk worse. Trust me."

Yen-Lo pushed Phoebe ahead of him as they came to the portal. "It's a nice place, limbo," she said in a tone of conversational sarcasm, as they passed what looked like a raging volcano in the distance. "I can see why you'd want to hang around." She could feel the edge of something against her back, and although she knew it wasn't the dragon blade, no sudden movements seemed like the right plan.

_Story of my life this past week. _

Ahead, she could see the old man who must be the master, Chen. On reflex, she called out to him in an even voice, "Are you all right?" She saw his nod, and felt the blade press into her back as Yen-Lo told her to shut up. Then she felt a yank, and she was standing in the Manor's kitchen, blinking at Piper.

"Uh, Piper? You want to clue me in on the plan here?" She nodded apologetically at Su Lin, across their island kitchen work table.

As she did so, she caught a glimpse of the reflection on the side of the stainless steel pot. And only the presence of the innocent whose father she had just seen at knifepoint kept her from shrieking outright:

Paige's face stared back at her. She brought her hands up. And they were Paige's. She looked up at Piper. "What did you do?"

Piper simply raised an eyebrow at her potion. "I realized that even though it scares me, I've got to start acting like the leader of this family, especially when it comes to magic." She looked up at, well, at Phoebe's soul. "I've got to trust her sometime, and it's not like any of us knows how to handle this."

"You are very brave. " They turned to Su Lin, who was considering Piper. "I cannot imagine anyone but my father leading the _shaolin _ or teaching his students, and I certainly can't imagine taking his place."

Piper shook her head wryly. "Oh, I'm not there yet, believe me, but trusting myself has worked better than anything else. I'd say you've got to give that a shot." She turned to Phoebe-as-Paige. "I'm betting that even in your body she can still orb. And that means she can get the _shaolin _master out of there."

Phoebe-as-Paige shook her head in turn. "How? She can't fight Yen-Lo, Piper."

Su Lin suddenly became very still. "She doesn't have to fight him. That's what he wants. She simply has to push him into reincarnation."

She wasn't prepared for how dark and stormy limbo was. Or the serenity on the _shaolin _master's face. Or the blade she could feel pressed into her—no, Phoebe's back. _Don't even breath until you make your move, _she told herself. They inched closer to the portal, and Paige-as-Phoebe made eye contact with the master. Then she held out a hand and called, "Blade!"

The knife did not come as quickly as the water glass had, but it did come. Paige-as-Phoebe spun away from Yen-Lo before he could grab her, pointing the blade toward him the whole time. "I'm going to get you out of here," she said to the master, never taking her eyes off Yen-Lo. "Your daughter is waiting for you."

The master shook his head, even as Yen-Lo started to chuckle evilly. "My daughter waits, even though she is not in limbo. She must let me go, and see her own place." He smiled sagely at her. "As you and your sisters must do." He stepped toward the portal, and gestured to it. "Remind my daughter: every great loss is a new beginning."

And with that, he jumped into the reincarnation portal. Paige-as-Phoebe only had two seconds to be shocked, because Yen-Lo immediately advanced on her, reaching for the dagger. All she could do was twist and weave to avoid him, manuevring so that even as they grappled for control of the blade he was the one with his back almost up against the portal.

"Witches," he spat, almost wrenching away the blade. "Who are you to say who is the better _shaolin _master?" And he pulled the blade from her hands, pointing it at her heart and ducking away from the portal. "You know _nothing, _any of you. And you are just a silly little girl playing a game you don't understand."

She was too close to the portal, and from the glint in his eye, Yen-Lo knew that. He jabbed the dagger at her, and she was pushed off balance. She only had time to grab his wrist before they were pulled through the portal.

When the whirling and spinning stopped, she was standing just at the edge of a grove of trees, through which she could hear and glimpse water, and small boats. _At least I still feel human. _She felt her hands, lifted them up, and they were hers. Wanting to be absolutely sure, and seeing no one, she ran towards the water to double check.

She saw the dock, and beyond it, a lake. She walked up to the water's edge, glancing around to make sure no one could tell she'd just appeared, seemingly from nowhere. It was at least 10 pm by this point, and the dark certainly helped. The wood-sided buildings set back on a surrounding ridge suggested a camp or retreat of some kind. _And it's still only May, _she thought. More sure, she turned back to the water – and was perhaps a bit too surprised to find her own reflection staring back at her by the light of the waxing moon.

She had just looked up again when she saw the glow. Some kind of light, one that wasn't coming from this side of the lake or – she squinted to make out – the other side, either. Then, softly, a woman's voice. "Paige. Paige."

Startled, she tried to locate the origin of the sound. The light on the water's surface grew in surface area and intensity, until she could see an ephemeral image of a woman moving toward her. The woman was smiling, a small smile, and Paige realized that smile, that face, looked familiar. _My adoption file. _Her adoptive parents had been very open about the facts of the adoption as they knew them, and she'd been given the file when she'd first seriously asked at ten, with a grainy, probably high school aged photo of Patricia Halliwell.

Knowing what she did now, she wondered at this woman, _her mother,_ even revealing that much of her identity.

"Don't be afraid." The image (ghost? spectre? shadow?) stopped right in front of her. Paige felt her heart do what seemed like a somersault, but it wasn't from fear.

"Mom?" The smile broadened, and Patty nodded, encouragingly. But Paige was still confused. "How? Why? Why here?"

Patty tilted her head, but the smile barely wavered. "Because once the Elders discovered you, they realized it was because of your own mortal search, and they wanted to reward that. And after all they put us through, I insisted." Paige blinked, taking that in. Against her training, and her own growing contentment with this new life, family, and destiny, against all that, she wanted to say, _I'm sorry I was the cause of so much fear and pain in your life. _But she remembered Yen-Lo's taunt, and realized that understanding, not knowledge, and certainly not narcissitic pity, was what she had been after.

She reached out a hand, not expecting to touch anything, and was shocked by the bracing coolness of contact with whatever substance her mother was made of now. _It's like_ _lake water. _

Paige met her mother's eyes, which were filled with such fondness and sadness that the words almost, almost stuck in her throat. "You died here."

Patty nodded, and Paige could barely make out the transparent tears glistening in her eyes. Yet there was a firm determination in Patty's voice when she said, "I fought my last demon here, and I lost."

Part of Paige knew she should feel like running away then, from the very real pain coming from such an unreal cause. The kids she worked to help, their birth parents died of drug overdoses, or cirrhosis of the liver, or, well, car accidents like the one that -. _Don't go there. _The rest of her, though, couldn't look away from what she had wanted for longer than she cared to admit.

She couldn't think of anything else to say, and there was nothing that sounded completely right or fitting. She simply asked what she wanted to understand. "Was it worth it?" Paige said this nearly at a whisper, gazing at the water, the dock at the edge of her peripheral vision. Patty followed her eyes, and focused on the dock, remembering.

She'd realized what Sam was running to tell her just as she turned back toward the demon and it engulfed her. _My mother was right. I've got the plan, but I don't have the power. _It took a nanosecond to understand why and squash the panic. The moments she had left were filled with remorse and relief in more or less equal measure. _They're all safe. I'm hurting them worse than anything else ever could. She's loved and cared for, and she'll do good, mortal good. They'll never forgive me. They're Halliwells, they'll understand one day..._

"It's what we do. I knew that innocent children were dying, and that I could find a way to stop that." Only that, and nothing else, could have torn Paige away from her meditative consideration of the water.

_I actually get that from her, not just from my adoption experience. _ The hope this idea gave her lit her face, and Patty felt encouraged enough to add, "I knew you and your sisters were okay, and that you'd be okay. Safe."

Paige shook her head, bringing forward the obvious yet newly painful thought that had needed to be voiced ever since Piper and Phoebe approached her in P3. "You meant for me to live a mortal life. I was never supposed to have any idea..."

Slowly, Patty nodded. But then she lifted her chin, and said, "I'm going to tell you something I once told your sisters. Something that is even more true for you." Paige gulped, thinking of that folded piece of stationary in a box.

"I would rather have loved you, as a mortal daughter, than have had to mourn you as a dead witch." Patty half-shrugged, her translucent hands out-stretched, and even just by moonlight Paige could see it was a gesture of pragmatic desperation. "And we knew, sweetheart, that they would come after us, after you, if you stayed with us. But it was the hardest thing either of us," that fond, knowing smile again, "the hardest thing _your father_ and I ever had to do."

Paige barely registered that there were tears in her eyes before the swell of cricket chirps into the night silence reminded her: Yen-Lo. Su-Lin and her sisters were still awaiting her triumphant return. Patty noticed, and said gently, "Go. They'll worry." Paige nodded again, and all of a sudden she had to bite her lip to keep it from trembling. Patty held out her hands, palms upright, and after a beat Paige pressed her own palms against them. That deep bracing coolness again, and Paige was at once fiercely grateful for this chance meeting, and full of grief that she'd never get the chance to feel the comforting warmth of this woman she was beginning to even mentally refer to as "Mom".

"You're meant to heal this family, Paige. I couldn't have asked for a better destiny for you than that."

They share a teary smile. Her gratitude and grief were reflected back to her, and it takes everything she has not to throw herself towards the spirit. Instead, she pulled back, taking backwards steps up the sand. Patty smiled, despite her tears, and said, "Welcome back, sweetheart. I love you."

Paige was nearly overcome, and she had to focus, because she was still scared half the time that she'd orb herself onto the middle of Pacific Coast Highway or something. But as she let the adrenaline wash over her and dissolve into blue, she mouthed, I love you, Mom.

Patty held her composure until the last orb disappeared, and then she let the tears she had held back nearly twenty-four years ago fall, transparent, down her face.

The easy words come out of her mouth the instant she is back in the Manor's kitchen. She says to Su Lin, "Your father told me to tell you that you must let him go, and see that you are the _shaolin _master now." They looked at her, a bit stunned by how calm and sure, almost serene, she sounded, looked. Piper and Phoebe exchanged a furtive glance, one that said, _What the heck happened?_

Su Lin still looked unsure. "He wouldn't come with you?"

Paige shook her head. "You have to embrace the new beginning you've been given, Su Lin. You don't have Yen-Lo holding you back from your destiny anymore." As their innocent took that in, Piper and Phoebe shooed Paige over to the breakfast nook.

Piper, seizing on the one definable thing, said slowly, and almost sweetly, "Paige, where's Yen-Lo?"

Paige's guilty cringe was smaller than it could have been. And her voice was only slightly sarcastic when she replied, "Chirping the night away by a lake somewhere, I guess." His transformation must have been instanteous, she realized.

Piper and Phoebe exchanged another look, one of hope against hope, and Phoebe said carefully, "Any idea which lake?"

_You're meant to heal this family. _Paige nodded. "The one," she said gently, "where Mom was killed."


	15. The Demon and Ben Turner, Part 1

典he Demon and Ben Turner, Part 1"

"_The witch actually seems to believe Belthazor gives a damn what becomes of her! She imagines he won't slit her throat the instant Delic grows impatient! If he lets her live that long...Klea knows him, knows his mind; __they agree on this, on all things Belthazor has merely forgotten. He was on the surface too long. No matter. Klea will succeed; they have been allies since he joined the brotherhood. And then they will make the witch the first sacrifice to the new order..."_

Prue rolled over in her sleep, sighing. 鼎ole. It was the slight note of agitation that woke him, but hearing his name from her sleeping lips made him forget the interruption. She'd shifted away from him, and so it was simple enough to gently lay a hand on her shoulder. She flinched awake, and when, determinedly, he pulled her back toward him, fear streaked her face: visceral from-her-core fear the likes of which he'd never quite associated with her. And this time, she didn't snap back into full composure. She did, however, find her voice again.

"I have never been as afraid of you as I have the last few days. I can stand the taunts and insults, and I'm more than willing to bide my time. She glared at him, and the utter distrust in her eyes reminded him vividly of the surface. 的f I'm not worth anything to you, if you'll just chose Klea in the end, choose her now,and the stubborn resolve finally asserted itself, 殿nd do yourself the favor of killing me privately, without the Brotherhood knowing.

The vision of his father's soul held aloft in Raynor's hand flashed in Cole's mind. He reached out and ran his fingers around the ruby brooch lying just at her breastbone. 泥o you know,he cupped the brooch in his palm, 塗ow the Source would have rewarded me if Vinceres had succeeded?Her only answer is a slight defiant lift of her chin. He tightened his grip on the brooch until the silver chain ran taunt across her throat. Whispered, 滴e would have given me my father's soul.

He can see that her tremble is not from fear耀omething has struck a cord. Filing that away, he continued, maintaining his grip on the brooch, 添ou are worth more than any being in all good magic. I wouldn't have called on Vinceres for anyone less.

She considered him. 鄭nd now that my dead body doesn't have a bounty on it? This,she gestured to the bed, the room, them, 妬s just what, a consolation prize?

Cole lifted the brooch until, very nearly, the two sides of the taunt chain came together over her throat. They stared at each other.

"Yes, and no. He flipped the brooch between his hands. 滴e doesn't want me consoled, Prue. He wants his loyal, grateful servant back. He let the brooch fall from his hands, even as he gripped the chain together. 鄭nd I will be his loyal, grateful servant. Because I do have one consolation. He released his hold on the chain, let it fall to her chest, and pressed his hand over her heart. 添ou, alive, carrying this child. The Source doesn't care about Klea. Whatever she thinks, the prophecy doesn't refer to her. You die by any hand, Prue, and he'll send demons to the surface after Phoebe."

Her fear then, for yes, it was fear, came from the depths of her mortal soul. She half bolted up in the bed, and clutched at his arm. Her terror was wordless, primal.

He nodded in reply to the unspoken question. Lifted her chin with one hand. 溺y brave, strong wife. Endure."

She heard the word from his lips for the first time, savored it, and reminded herself that she didn't care why he had chosen her. He had. And she_ could_ endure, yet...

She fingered the brooch, warm from his touch. 添ou should know, the average demon isn't shy about expressing an opinion.

He raised an eyebrow, giving her an opening. 徹h?

"I wouldn't care if I could do something about it. Even ignore it, not that I haven't tried. The slight roll of her eyes gave him another chance.

"Opinions... He was realizing that perhaps burying himself in his books was not the wisest choice for the moment. There was a battle brewing here and now.

She looked him square in the eye. 典hey call me your whore. Her laugh was cruelly self-deprecating. 鄭nd worse. And I _let _them. The anger she's held in pushes to the surface, and battled with her despair. 鄭nything else is suicide."

"'And worse?' His demonic half chortled in anticipation.

She has to make more of an effort to meet his eyes. 鼎oncubine. Broodmare."

When he first saw her in that cavern, chained and weak, he'd had thoughts along those lines. Her assessment of his intent wasn't wrong, exactly his human half had clung to his memories of Phoebe, and seen Prue as a necessary evil. A concubine for the Underworld, for the prophecy, while his love stayed safe on the surface. His demon half, meanwhile, agreed with the Source: forcing her into his bed, and his seed into her womb, would be better than killing her.

But now, all of him was in rare agreement. The Underworld had insulted what was his. His wife. His property. And for that, even Klea would pay.

Perhaps she saw that resolve on his face. Perhaps. These taunts have clawed at her soul, though. 徹nce the Source has the child, what will I be worth to you then?

There was danger in even thinking these thoughts now, he knew. He was upsetting the delicate internal balance he had worked so very hard to reconstruct since his return. But there was truth between them, painful truth.

"You will still be just about the only being in the last century who could see me for all that I am, all at once. She looked at him, and reflected on her face he could see the lurking curiosity. She had only seen his demon self from a far, after all.

"I find that hard to believe,she said. He smirked, and pressed his thumb hard against her throat. Smiled evilly to see her eyes fill with that wary determination, and wistfully, in his soul, to see the shadow of the anger it seemed she had felt at his return to Raynor. To the Source.

"Do you. The name flowed from her lips then, silently. He'd known she didn't care this much what mere underlings thought. But this...

"She never looked at me, through all of me, the way you do. He lightened the pressure, almost into a caress, and she breathes. 鄭nd you will remain, in my mind, the price for my father's soul.

"Well. All of him thrilled to hear the confident frankness return for different reasons. 哲ow I really need to know."

He began the story over breakfast. 典he Underworld saw my father as a promising candidate for exploitation. It was thought that with some 'luck', let's say, a young, bright, ambitious assemblyman could,he paused to pass her the milk for her second cup of black tea.

"Become governor, putting the entire state under the Source's control? She bit back triumph at his slow smile. 鉄ounds like a relatively manageable goal. So. Why her? The tea was hot, but not nearly strong enough. _Eight months without coffee. _

"She had a track record of effective infiltration. She knew how to operate on the surface, how to blend in. And she was high level enough that the Triad trusted her implicitly. The Source might have ignored their recommendation on some minor operation, but not this. He handed her the sugar.

She measured out two spoonfuls precisely. Stirred them into her tea. 滴ow did she...?

"He needed a secretary.

She set down the spoon, and faced his glinting, knowing look. _Right through me, back to that first knock on Roger's door nine years ago. _She smiled at him, and at the implication he, too, can see the whole of her, all at once. _ It goes both ways. _

Still, she must force out the obvious question. 典his Faustian bargain, was it _supposed _to include a family fit for tintype?

"Not at first. There was something in his eyes which made her wonder whether she was getting the mortal side of the story now. 滴e wanted one, for his public image, and just because. So she adjusted the mission."

She blinked at him, in mild disbelief. 展ithout consulting the Triad, the Source...? She set down her tea cup, deciding absently that was her quota for the day.

His grin was rueful. 鉄he was nothing if not strong-willed and opinionated. If that's what the mission required, that's what she'd do. Handlers be damned. But word of her insubordination got back to the Source.

Prue eyed the detritus of their meal. 鉄he was _ordered_ to kill him.

He nodded. 鄭nd of course, she protested that he hadn't fully agreed to the bargain yet. Her real anger over not getting to complete her mission saved us both, I've always thought.

There were plates to stack and mugs to clear away as she considered her next question. 展hen did the Source start to see you as more than the fallout of a failed mission?

He brought the last of the dishes into the kitchen while he thought about that. 展hen I was about seven, my mother's mentor was vanquished. And since she had no other supporters, the Source thought he'd take the opportunity to remind her how precarious her situation was. He called us to his chamber, and taunted her, saying he'd vanquish us both since we were useless to him.

They walked to their living area as Prue took that in. She didn't fail to notice that he made sure she was settled on the sofa before he continued. 泥emonic children, as a rule, have no real attachments. They do tend to be rather precocious, but no one on our side pays attention to them. They go around in packs and cause mischief, murder if they can, but they aren't connected to any hierarchy, they aren't used in plots, and no one expects anything from them yet.

She leaned forward, an inkling of where this was going lighting her eyes. 哲ot even the Source?"

A flash of defiant satisfaction. 哲ot even the Source. He was completely taken back, because I didn't fight him, and I didn't throw myself on his mercy. He looked at the glass top of their coffee table like he was looking through it, back to that moment. Only the reflection of Prue's questioning eyes made him finally look up. 的 told the Source that I would be the best witch killer he could have, because no other demon could blend in among humans like I could, no demon could know them like I could, because no other demon had a human soul."

"You said nodded. 鄭t seven years old. Before the Source. There was a tinge of disbelief, yes, but mainly there was admiration in her voice. Naked admiration. She whistled softly. 鄭nd your mother?

He shrugged. 的 said that unexpected things happened on the surface, and that he had to give his agents freedom to react properly there and then, or else other missions would fail. Their eyes met. 鏑ooking back, that may have been almost too bold. But he let us live. And he allowed Mother to take assignments again, which meant we went back and forth.

His easy familiarity with most human customs came from that exposure, she thought. She heard in her mind the echo of his words to the bartender in the time loop, "_Whiskey, make it two. Bring the bottle_.and shivered despite herself.

He saw the realization on her face, and said, 溺y first kill was six years in the making because of all I had to learn. The rueful smile returned, and he corrected himself. 釘ecause of all _she_ believed I had to learn. She didn't want us to be the cause of any further failure. She would always say, 'Anything worth doing..."

"'Is worth doing well.' Prue's hands clenched reflexively. The loathing that flashed on her face had a very specific target then. He noted it, filing it away for later use. Her voice was focused when she asked, 鉄o how'd it go?"

"I was an shrugged again. 釘eginner's luck."

_The wharf bustles with the unloading of cargo ships, scurrying dockworkers, merchants opening for business, and young fishwives out to buy the day's bread. Nearly all walk towards the market in pairs or groups. He watches the slim, rather darker complexioned brunette who walks alone. She has the uncertain air of an immigrant fresh off the boat from - he passes by her, whistling and hawking the day's paper, so that her eyes flick toward him and she stumbles over a large cobblestone, cursing under her breath Romania. He considered his next move. Mother had given him damn little guidance on this__傭__y design. A __都__ink or swimtest, she'd called it. _

_He finally tailed her the way he'd read about pickpockets and proper thieves doing in penny dreadfuls. She ducked into an alleyway two blocks west of the market, where he has already moved across the street. Behind the unfolded front page, he hears a protection spell spoken in the language of the gypsies Mother had at least given him something to go on and he knew he had his target. _

_She is engrossed in her ritual, and he is across the street and behind her, his new athame at her back before she is aware. __鉄__pells won't help you now, chivani. The secret name invoked the fear that hunched her shoulders, but he especially enjoyed the confusion on her face when she turned toward him. __添__ou are not the one who hunts was denial, not haughtiness, although he'd have taken either one. _

_He needed some fittingly grand response what better than that bard these humans sang the praises of?_

_He stabbed through her larynx, and the wine red blood gurgled in her throat. __典__here are more things in heaven and earth, chivani, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."_

_He pushed her to the ground, knelt, and stabbed her again through the heart. Mother would be furious if he left the thing half done. _

"Sure,she said when he concluded. 典hat certainly sounded amateurish. He chuckled, thinking to himself, _Wit becomes her. _ Prue shook her head in mock disbelief. 展as there anything you _didn't_ excel at?"

Her question was not answered, for right then, a pair of red-rimmed eyes materialized behind them, and there was a quick, perfunctory knock on their door and then it was conjured away, and in the doorway stood Delic.

"The Source has grown impatient, Belthazor. He demands that the witch submit to the Seer again.

Prue and Cole exchanged a subtle, wary look before Delic stepped forward and grasped her wrist, pulling her out into the corridor. This was the next move in the game who knew what they planned, under that pretense? Cole's face assumed its usual inscrutable mask. 鄭s he wishes.

He barely glimpsed the small trickle of cold fear on her face before the door was reconjured.

As she and Cole had surmised, Delic and his assistants did not take Prue before the Source. 填seless witch,he spat, as his assistants threw her down before them in a small cavern. She got to her feet and turned to face them slowly, deliberately. She'd be damned further if she'd let them see her weak now.

"You dare threaten the reputation of the Brotherhood of the Thorn?Delic strode forward, and backhanded her hard across the face. He grabbed her by the hair, and before she could hit back, drew out an athame and held it against her check. 的 should kill you for that, witch. He yanked on her hair, pulling her head back, and forcing her to look at him.

"But I want to see Belthazor and Klea kill you even more.

He moved the blade to her chest. 的 shall have to make do with your suffering. The jab was shallow, designed to bleed. She gritted her teeth, letting him make several more cuts, and murmur several more taunts in her ear, while she slid her hands behind her back. He had moved on to her upper torso before she felt the increasingly familiar icy dryness settle on her palm. With an effort she drew it in front of her. 添ou know, Delic, I may be not be all that familiar with the Brotherhood, but it strikes me as a rather nearsighted organization.

She had the length of his surprise and no longer, and she used it all, taking out one of his assistants. The other looked from the now empty spot back to her. To his boss's furious astonishment she said, 泥id you think I wouldn't turn, Delic? Or that I'd cower powerless before you? She shoved him away from her with a vengeance, the second energy ball already forming on her palm.

Her eyes saw him look at the door a few beats too long, and then walk to the cabinet where he kept his athame. How he polished it thoroughly, until it gleamed. He tossed it and caught it again, and smiled.

The rest of her appeared. 典here is the Belthazor I remember.

Toss, and catch. 的 wish I could say the same for you, Klea. He faced her, and came toward her. 典ime was, you were obedient to the Source _and_ self-aware. Now you're so blindly caught up in the Seer's gambit, you don't see how it'll run off the rails.

"Gambit?she retorted. 的s that what you call the path of true evil after a witch slides her way into your mortal soul?"

He looked at her. 笛ealousy also doesn't become you, Klea. Not when it makes you this blind. The prophecy is wiccan turning a Charmed One was the only way for evil to make any use of it.

The rims of her eyes flare. He saw then a glimmer of the way she had seemed to him when he was sixteen worldly, pragmatic, contemptuous of the hierarchy, and yet loyal to the Source above all. His voice became softly conspiratorial. 鉄he is broken, Klea, utterly broken. The most powerful good witch of all time, and she snapped like a twig under my hands. She has no hope but loyalty to the Source, no solace but my touch, and no redemption of any kind but the child of my seed.

He shook his head slowly, rhetorically. 典he Source's plan isn't a foolish gambit, Klea. It's the coup of reached out and traced the lids of her eyes, the way she had liked since they first explored one another a century before.

"Forgive me, my brother,she purred after a moment. 的 suppose I simply wish I could have watched you break her.

"I know. He smiled, remembering her wistfullness before he had gone to the surface for the Triad.

His tone was softly nostalgic, but with the hint of an edge. 典here have never been secrets between us, Klea. His lips brushed over hers. 哲ot for a hundred years. What is she planning, _katua_?"

The old pet name, a relic of the matronly Basque witch they'd killed in 1920, falling from his lips as smoothly as it had before the Triad mission, kept her from simply shimmering out with a wide feline grin. She said, eyeing him, 鉄he fancies herself another, better Dantalion.


	16. Prescott and Pine

Piper stood in the doorway to the bedroom, a large cardboard box behind her. She'd finally managed to find the time to – no, actually, she'd stopped putting off dealing with Prue's personal belongings, telling herself it needed to be done. She sighed and finally approached the bureau. The top was clear, the way Prue had always kept it. She opened the top drawer.

There, to one side of a stack of neatly folded blouses, was a hat box. Rather more curious now, she lifted it out of the drawer and set it on the bed. The lid came off more easily than she expected, and she certainly wasn't prepared for the sight that met her eyes: scraps of fabric in forest green and eggshell, a catering menu from Schroeder's, and, she rifled through, stunned, a guest list 180 names long. It was the large piece of embossed card stock, though, that made tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

_"Mr. and Mrs. Oliver and Marjorie Laurent of __Santa__ Clara announce the marriage of their son Roger to Ms. Prudence Halliwell of San Francisco. The wedding will take place at Mission Dolores Park on June 15, 1998." _

Almost three years later, Piper marveled. Prue kept all of this, and it's preserved – Piper swallowed past a lump in her throat - like it was yesterday. She brushed her hand over the swatch of eggshell, and her wedding ring caught her eye. The tears came slow and silent, and she thought, _You ruined the wedding I obsessed too much about, and because of you I had the wedding I actually wanted. _Phoebe's run-in with Roger had done pretty much the same thing for Prue, but as Piper sat looking at the box, she grieved that her big sister never got her own second chance.

Nursing a cup of tea in the kitchen late that afternoon, Phoebe flipped aimlessly through the classifieds from that morning's _Chronicle. _Nothing in the few offerings looked remotely like a good fit, and her memories of the false starts she'd gone through before finally getting her degree kept her from jumping at every half decent possibility. When the phone rang, she nearly sprang up to answer it.

Paige, of course, just leaving work. "_Pearl Harbor _just opened, and I wondered if you ..." Phoebe was so relieved to be able to grab the chance to do something, anything, other than continue to stare at a creased newspaper, that she said "of course" before it registered that Paige wasn't really inviting Piper. Which wasn't _bad_, exactly – a single girls' night out sounded great, and there was so much they still didn't know about Paige that Phoebe was fiercely curious about: what she'd been like in high school, where she went to college, and most intensely of all? What growing up Halliwell, sort of, with two (happily?) married parents had been like.

So Phoebe repeated "of course," more firmly, and asked Paige what movie theater they should meet at. "The Canon is about halfway between South Bay and the Manor," she replied. "How about there?" Even as she agreed and they settled on the 9 pm showing, Phoebe thought _We can't keep meeting like this. _She hadn't had to schedule sisterly time quite like this since Grams first got sick

Surprisingly, the theater wasn't that packed, and the movie was a decent romantic drama, although Phoebe couldn't help but think _Leo would never take Piper to see this. Even I can see it isn't that accurate. _ And it didn't seem like Paige thought it was either – she'd just wanted to spend the time.

As they walked out of the theater, Phoebe was trying not to think about returning to her stack of classifieds. Paige looked like she didn't know whether to be content with company or boxed in. Both were lost in thought, and the first screams coming from behind the theater didn't register at first. But as they turned toward the parking lot, Phoebe distinctly heard the sound of someone – and by the screams that now registered, a female someone – being stabbed.

The sight that greeted them when they rounded the corner gave Phoebe a strong sense of deja vu. There wasn't time then to think about it though: the attacker was already running away, and the woman was bleeding from the neck. Barely stopping long enough to notice that the wound appeared to have been made by an athame, Phoebe shouted to Paige, "This was demonic, get her to Leo!" Even as Paige nodded and began to orb the woman out, Phoebe was off and running after the attacker.

Around that other corner, though, she only found a homeless man asleep on a pile of rags. "I could have sworn..." she muttered, glancing around. But there was nothing for it but to head back to her car and head home to the situation there.

In the stand of trees on the edge of the lot, a man in a suit watched as she pulled away.

Piper hovered by Leo's shoulder as he healed the innocent, who lay unconscious on the Manor's living room sofa. She could admit to being a little hurt by not only Paige's implied snub and the innocent duty Paige had subsequently orbed in to hand off, but she _would _not until the situation was under control.

Paige did seem to get that this was only the first act, though, and that did mollify Piper, a little. Which meant she was relatively focused when the innocent began to wake up, followed moments later by the sound of Phoebe at the front door.

The first thing the woman did was clutch at her throat, which wasn't surprising. What was, somewhat, was the necklace that Phoebe only saw fully now. Three silver crescent moon charms on a thin chain. She walked into the living room slowly, trying not to startle the woman, who was looking around at them and saying, still a little weakly, "Thank you, I – I don't know how to thank you."

Trying remember where – somewhere in the book, she was sure – she'd seen the symbol before, Phoebe sat down on the coffee table, smiled, and looked at the woman. "Let's just start with your name."

Despite her still wary eyes, the woman returned Phoebe's smile with one of her own. "Samantha."

"Well, Samantha, tell us who was after you. I never even saw who it was." Phoebe glanced up at Piper in acknowledgment; Piper then looked to Paige for confirmation.

The woman, however, was shaking her head. "I don't really know. He just started going after my coven a few weeks ago. Picking us off, one by one." The weary fear in her eyes kept the lid on Phoebe's own slight impatience – and, Piper's too, apparently.

It was Paige, standing off by the fireplace who then spoke up. "All the same way?" Everyone looked at her. But the scrutiny didn't make her wilt completely – it seemed she was trying to figure something out. "I mean, if this demon's like Shax, then he'll only kill in one way, right? That's some kind of clue."

Even as Phoebe thought to herself, _Where there's an athame, there's usually an energy ball, _Samantha glanced at Paige, and said quietly, "No. One or two were killed with energy balls. He," she took a breath, "he made sure they never saw it coming." She reached up to touch the charms on her necklace – reassuring herself, they all saw.

"The triple crescent." Phoebe pressed the chance to go on the offense again. "It's your coven's symbol?" The woman nodded, and Phoebe gently held out her hand. "May I?"

Without a word, she unclasped it and pooled the chain in Phoebe's palm. No sooner had Phoebe closed her fingers around the necklace than she was pulled into a vision: _A grassy area, with stone steps leading away from the secluded path. Their innocent, in a light spring jacket and bohemian hat, walking in the evening, when a large demonic figure, with markings red on black, surprised her from behind and began to pull her towards the shadowed side of the steps. The shape of his eyes, the build, the markings, all like ... _

"Belthazor." She came back to herself abruptly, seeing the startled faces turned toward her. She took a breath and tried to explain. Paige and the innocent were both completely lost, and Piper and Leo were eying her warily. "The demon after Samantha, he looked a lot like Belthazor." Aware of how she sounded, Phoebe gestured with her fist around the necklace, a bit less confidence in her voice. "Build, height, only this one's markings were red on black." Almost as an afterthought, she relaxed her grip on the coiled necklace, and handed it back. The crescent moons had begun to faintly imprint on her palm.

She stood up, saying briskly, "Definitely an upper level demon. So, at least we know the game plan."

Piper wasn't completely fooled by Phoebe's decisive act, but they did need to get the ball rolling, and so she nodded. "Where?"

Phoebe glanced at Samantha. "On the edge of somewhere grassy, like an outdoor amphitheater. At night."

Their innocent nodded. "Sounds like it could be Stanley Arboreta, I pass by there on my way home from work."

Piper and Paige stood then too. Paige still looked confused, but she also looked like she had that ability to set the issue aside, for the moment. "Well," Piper glanced at the clock – it was nearly midnight - "it sounds like you aren't in danger tonight." Phoebe, already moving toward the foyer, stopped and nodded confirmation. "So," Piper continued, gently but nevertheless firmly steering Samantha that way as well, "why don't you go home and get some sleep. We'll meet there at 8pm tomorrow." She nodded, trying to give strength to the innocent and herself. "And we will vanquish him."

The woman rose, but stopped at the archway to the foyer. "How do you know -" she began to say, to protest. Phoebe, in front of her, raised her eyebrows, and then breathed a silent sigh of relief that her voice didn't waver. "Because we're the Charmed Ones."

Sending Paige into the kitchen to begin brewing the base of the potion was surprisingly easy – which was to say that it was only as complicated and prolonged as Piper's need to give precise, detailed instructions made it. Once she was safely out of earshot, Piper turned to Phoebe. "You know you have to tell her about Cole." Phoebe looked up, startled not so much by Piper's words as her tone, and how they seemed to have shifted places almost without her fully noticing. _You went and started turning yourself into the eldest child. _

Piper went on, determined. "If she goes into that fight tomorrow not knowing what we know about this type of demon..." She closed her eyes against the thought, and opened them. "And she deserves to know how we know it."

Phoebe let her eyes retrace Cole's memorable reentrance into their lives through the foyer where they now stood. "Yeah." She nodded at Piper. "I'll tell her." Then, her demeanor losing none of its seriousness, in fact, much the opposite, she added softly, "Just promise me you'll tell her about Jeremy sometime."

Phoebe walked into the kitchen to find that Paige had managed to make a good start on the potion based on Piper's instructions. The pot was filled with a thick, light purple liquid, to which Paige was sprinkling in some herb or salt or Phoebe couldn't guess what which caused it to darken considerably. "You're really starting to get the hang of potion brewing, huh?" Phoebe looked down at the softly bubbling liquid. "It almost looks ready for the cockles."

Paige glanced up, and considered Phoebe, comprehension clear in her voice. "You sound like you've done this before." She adjusted the heat under the pot. "On Belthazor, maybe?"

It was easier to answer than Phoebe imagined. "Yes. Except Piper and Prue did this part. I was off trying to figure out what was going on with my boyfriend." She began fiddling with the dried herb bottles. "My murdering, energy ball using, athame carrying," she couldn't help the wistful thought, "wonderfully attentive, dedicated, protective boyfriend."

Phoebe made herself look up at Paige. Her little sister's face had a sort of concentrated determination written across it, but there was also a hint of amused recognition. Paige said simply, "You dated a – what did you call it? High level demon?"

Phoebe nodded, and let herself remember the fond admiration on his face and in his voice on what had been the last time she'd seen him as simply mortal. "_You've come a long way, haven't you?" _Then she fixed her gaze on the simmering purple liquid in front of her, and said steadily, "Demons that powerful have a human form that lets them walk the earth, blend in better. Cole's wasn't just a mask, though_."_

Paige, who'd begun shifting the bottles they'd finished with back to the cupboards, said carefully, "He, uh, had a human name. But how do you know that wasn't just - " she trailed off, suddenly unsure how far to go on this rocky ground of her sisters' past.

"After we found out he was demonic, Prue and Piper brewed this potion for an upper level demon – it's ready for the pig's foot, by the way - " Paige grimaced despite herself, and a ghost of a smile flicked across Phoebe's face, "and we tried to vanquish him. But he'd failed to kill us several times already, and the Source was just furiously impatient, and so we, " she smiled, self-deprecatingly, "_they _ended up tracking him down with alongside a demonic bounty hunter who'd been sent after him."

Paige's mouth had formed a small "O" of astonishment at this recounting. And she could only imagine that this "Source" who she'd heard Piper also mention once or twice was on the side of evil. But she had an inkling where this was going, nevertheless. "This bounty hunter still wasn't that crazy about witches, I'm guessing?"

Phoebe turned the heat off under the potion. The other part of "how they knew what they knew" was in the attic. As they left the kitchen and crossed through the dining room, she said simply, "This one tried to kill me. I was in his way, trying to protect Cole."

Paige stopped on the threshold to the foyer. The "why" in the wary look she directed at Phoebe went unspoken. "There was a reason he couldn't kill me, or us. And it wasn't just because we fought back and won. And we came really close to killing him." She couldn't say the rest standing on the stairs, so, determinedly, she climbed the rest of the way to the attic. Paige, her brows furrowed, followed.

The familiar sight of the triquetra on the cover of the book was not the reassurance it usually was. All she could think of now was the Andras-amped fight and how it had split the triquetra, stripping their powers. _I'm home, right where I should be. _ And on that note she opened the book to as close to the entry for "Belthazor" as she could. She turned to Paige. "Any question is fair, okay?" And with that, she flipped the rest of the way to the entry.

The color drawing – charcoal, she thought – caught Paige's attention first, of course. _Something almost exactly like that thing attacked that coven of witches. And will attack again. _Trying to set aside that thought, she looked at the text. "Beware this demonic soldier of fortune..." It was everything they had hinted at, and more. Then, she noticed, tucked in the binding, a strip of photo booth photos. Phoebe, smiling, laughing, her arms around...

"That's him." Paige looked up, and the determined nonchalance in Phoebe's voice rang even more false alongside the way her eyes were making a conscious effort not to land on the photos.

"You", she pieced this together even as she looked between the drawing, the photos, and Phoebe's face.

"You loved him." The sarcastic follow up softened at Phoebe's flinch. "I'm guessing you didn't know about the..." She nodded at the the drawing.

They both looked away, and Phoebe said softly, but with a measure of steel, "He had a soul, Paige. He was half-mortal. _Is _half mortal. The bounty hunter told us so, and he had no reason to lie about that." Her eyes finally slid to where Paige had pulled the photo strip. "And somehow it was reawakened by little old me. And that's why he couldn't kill me."

They looked at each other, and Paige, who was beginning to feel the late hour, closed the book. "But what about all the others that he did kill?"

Phoebe spent the next morning tracking down the remaining potion components – cockles, which they were out of, and to her grim determination, a pig's foot. He "bumped" into her as she was leaving a Chinatown butcher's with the brown bagged purchase.

"Excuse me, were you at the Canon Theater last night, by any chance?" She turned around, surprised, mainly, and a little wary. "I only ask because I was there, on the advice of the SFPD. There's been a murderer in that area targeting young women around your age." He motioned her to the side of the sidewalk, and with some hesitation, Phoebe followed. "The latest attack happened last night, but the police don't have many leads. If you saw anything, please get in touch with me," and he handed her his card. "My name is Sykes, Oliver Sykes." He melted back into the crowd before she could ask who exactly he was. She looked at the card. _Oliver Sykes. Assistant District Attorney. _And Phoebe had to pry the bagged pig's foot from her own suddenly fierce grip.

Piper was worried enough about the state of the potion ("I just don't know what leaving it cold and unfinished overnight is going to do to it.") that Phoebe decided not to mention her run-in with the new ADA. She had enough to do figuring out her own feelings.

She knew, of course, that continuing as the Charmed Ones meant continuing to run the risk they'd encountered last year: becoming crime witnesses who were far more than mere witnesses. But there was also the completely irrational thought that the business card inspired: _I'm jinxed. _She could barely articulate it further: she was spooked. But there _was _the potion to finish, and the memory of the looks on Piper and Leo's faces after her premonition last night kept her from dwelling on her fears, let alone any other emotion inspired by the morning's encounter. They all had a job to do, an innocent to protect so that she would be the last witch this monster hurt.

And, she reflected as she stirred, she had an altered sisterly job description. Piper had gradually started

to find her way as the eldest, the family leader. So between her and Paige, the new Halliwell, there was going to be tension – it seemed inherent in the legacy, even, of their upbringing - which meant something, _someone _had to be a buffer. And when had Piper, as middle sister, run the most crucial inference of their lives? "When I came home," she whispered. Startled that she'd voiced the thought aloud, she continued unraveling the logic silently.

Looking back with the grief not quite so fresh, it was amazing how much history had repeated itself, with one glaring difference—Paige was in their lives, and hearts, because of magic first and foremost. She didn't have the completely mortal sisterly need to depend on them. And if nothing else, her physical address across town was just inconvenient. What had Prue said to Piper when Piper had wanted to move out of the Manor after the wedding, claiming they'd lived apart before? "Our _lives _were apart, Piper."

Something clicked, then. Phoebe just didn't want her little sister's life to be separate from hers any longer than it already had. And now all she needed was a damn good reason to convince Paige to move home.

The darkened path looked pretty much like it had in her premonition. Piper, behind her with a paring knife, was just wondering this for the fortieth time when they saw Samantha walking ahead of them – and something was definitely following her. Phoebe barely had time to mutter, "Got the empty vial?" to Paige before it was clear they needed to alter the plan of attack. Piper quickly (and not without relief) handed over the steak knife, and Phoebe pulled Paige after her to crouch on the side of the amphitheater.

The demon had begun to close in, but Phoebe knew they needed to get the timing right, or Samantha would startle and give them away. "One shot," she mouthed to Paige. Five seconds later, she signaled, and they ran at the demon from behind.

She connected and sliced into him before he responded, and the slicing was clean through. The demon rounded on them, and as she drove for the grass Paige grabbed the piece of flesh, sticking it in the empty vial. Phoebe, meanwhile, was up again and fighting the demon, trying to land a roundhouse kick. Samantha's initial yelp was silenced when she saw Piper running to help.

Phoebe had almost subdued the demon to go in for another slice – and Paige was on the verge of getting to her feet to show the vial's contents – when they all heard the whistle of a dagger being thrown.

The aim was off, and it sailed past the half prostrate demon to embed in an oak on the other side of the amphitheater. With a sneer, the demon shimmered out. A woman then ran onto the path. "I had him!"

Piper, crouching with Samantha, looked up in baffled exasperation. "Who the hell are you?"

They again let Samantha go home, before decamping to the Manor with the dagger-throwing woman.

"Emma," she'd told them.

"You're out at night throwing daggers at demons in parks...why?" Piper's sarcasm had hit near boiling point. Phoebe spoke up, putting an arm on her sister's shoulder.

"What she meant was, 'That's a pretty risky thing to do.' Especially if, like you said, you aren't a witch."

Emma slowly shook her head at them, Piper and Phoebe on the living room couch, Paige and Leo standing around the coffee table. "He killed my fiance. Andrew was a witch, and I've studied his books." She looked at Piper almost defiantly. Again, Phoebe tried out her new mediator role.

"To hunt down his killer?" Emma nodded.

"Well," and this, the improvisation, felt like much more familiar territory, "You haven't studied ours. Why don't you head up to where we keep it in our attic, and look through it, see what else you can learn about the demon." She glanced at her brother-in-law. "Leo can show you the way." Piper, glancing between her husband and the innocent, nodded as well.

Once Emma and Leo had begun to climb the stairs, Piper said, "So, that'll keep her occupied while we go and figure our how to try again to get - " Paige cleared her throat, and held up the vial containing the demon flesh.

Piper blinked. "-that potion finally brewed! Okay, into the kitchen."

The interrupted boiling time hadn't hurt the potion at all – in went the demon flesh, and poof, it was ready to bottle. They were just tossing ideas back and forth, with Paige, to Phoebe's quiet joy, making a few very good suggestions about other places around the Canon the demon might try, when Leo suddenly orbed in. "Emma discovered something," he said hurriedly to their startled looks, "and you should be prepared. This demon," he nodded at the vial of vanquishing potion, "wasn't the one who killed her fiance -"

The door to the dining room opened, and in came Emma. She held the open Book of Shadows in her arms. Open, they could see as she marched over to the center counter table and set it down, to the entry for Belthazor. "This one was."

Piper and Leo were both willing to let Phoebe talk to Emma one-on-one; Paige, on the other hand, needed some convincing. "If we're a trio," she began, "then we owe it to both of them to be united on this." She tried, but failed to articulate the idea that Phoebe was probably the last person on the planet Emma wanted to talk to at the moment. Their innocent had to have seen those photo booth photos, still stuck in the book at the entry. But Piper was slowly shaking her head. "Phoebe needs to do this, and she needs to do it by herself." Perhaps remembering Billy, the man who had hunted the Wendigo because it had killed _his _fiance, she added, "I think Emma can hold her own." She picked up the potion vial. "Besides, we've got our own demon to fight." She nodded toward the back door. "Come on, we'll try around the Canon."

They never even sat down. Phoebe, knowing this conversation could go in directions she really couldn't begin to deal with, especially right after her explanation to Paige, grabbed the chance to set the tone. "What was his name?"

Emma glanced out the window, into the street lamp-lit night. "Andrew. He..." She seemed to make a decision, although Phoebe doubted it had to do with trust, necessarily. "He was a grad student in computer science at UCSF. We were waiting until he got his degree to have his family come out from Wisconsin for the ceremony."

There was nothing she could say, and yet dread made her ask, "When-when had he been planning on getting his degree?"

Her eyes are wet, but she answered. "On the 8th." And Phoebe knew she had no right to reel from that information, but she did Only the impulse to be thorough, and the fact that her heart did hurt for this woman, allowed her to ask for the rest of the pieces of the puzzle.

This too, however, Emma seemed to want to tell – she wanted, Phoebe saw, not only vengeance, but her lover's memory kept alive. "He was a conjuror. He could create the most wonderful things – apple shaped oranges, pens with wings..." She smiled shakily, her memories mixed with pain.

"Evil probably felt threatened by how powerful he was," Phoebe put in, steadily. "Emma, I am so very sorry for your loss."

And there came the fury. "_How? _How could you even _begin _to understand what I've been going through when you couldn't even see that murderer for what he was?"

Some blows, Phoebe would reflect later, you just couldn't fully brace for. This one felt like a knockout punch to the solar plexus. "I did see, actually. I saw him kill. And after that I knew that there was no turning back." The woman opened her mouth to protest, but Phoebe went on, quietly. "The really cunning evil we've fought, it's all lured us in somehow. And that lure is the truth, too." She looked at her innocent, hoping the hard-earned lesson was enough.

And maybe it was, but from her grief, and not her desire for revenge, she wondered. "Have you ever lost anyone to evil?"

Now Phoebe found she could look this woman in the eye. "My mom, when I was two. My big sister, three weeks ago."

Emma was not shocked, nor was she now silent, but she was subdued. "I'm not going to find him, am I?

Turning from the window, Phoebe's eyes rested on the fireplace. "He's in hell, where he belongs."

The drive to the Canon Theatre was silent, until they were nearly there, that is, and Piper said, "Quite the little outing you two had. I never would have thought of this place." Paige had the good grace to look somewhat sheepish as they pulled into the parking lot. Making sure they had the potion secured before they got out of the car, Piper asked, "So what did movie did you two see?"

Paige was about to answer, and Piper was looking around warily as they got out, when a fair haired man in a suit approached them. "You two ladies are awfully brave to come poking around a crime scene when the murderer's still at large."

It was like walking a tightrope, trying not to tip their hand until they were sure one way or the other. Some intimidating creeps _were _human, after all, Piper reminded herself firmly. The sneaking sense of deja vu was probably nothing, but still. Paige responded primly. "Who said anything about a crime scene? And, uh, who are you?"

He gave her a small smile. "Name's Oliver Sachs. I'm the assistant district attorney, looking for witnesses to the murder that occurred here the other evening." And just like that, the doubled sense of deja vu hit Piper again full force. _One false word, just like with Jeremy. _

Carefully, she replied, "Attempted murder, actually. She survived." It came out sounding probably too much like a boast, but the cat was coming out of the bag anyway.

Sachs' smile, still aimed mostly at Paige, deepened. "So there are no real witnesses this time. Only...more potential victims! Well, I was warned Belthazor would be a tough act to live up to." The energy ball formed in his palm. And before their eyes he transformed into his demonic form, its skin black streaked with red just as Phoebe had foreseen.

Paige looked between the energy ball and the demon and thought, _Imitation's the sincerest form of flattery, but this is a bit much. I wonder what originality can do. _She glanced at Piper, and as the demon loomed over them, silent agreement was reached.

Paige held out her hand. "Energy ball!" It came to her as though pulled, and that so surprised the demon that he nearly appeared to freeze on his own, even as Piper made sure. Paige tossed the energy ball against a low-slung brick wall at the edge of the lot, and Piper threw the potion.

It made sense to do this sort of thing at night, Paige thought, as they watched the demon explode in a brilliant fireball. Plus, "No evidence left behind!" Piper turned to look at her, and her smile was wistful and fond.

They were again quiet on the car ride back to Church Street, but the silence had a more relaxed feel. Then, "Maybe try a movie theater closer to the Manor next time." Paige had to really look to see if Piper was serious, before the hint of a smile gave her away. But Piper was warming up to something she'd been thinking about ever since she found that hatbox. _Life had to go on – they couldn't be like the contents of that box, three years behind the times. _And to the loud voice in her mind protesting that it was too soon, well, very little in their magical or even their mortal lives happened when they wanted it to. Things tended to happen when they needed to happen. Or when they were meant to.

"And try all the good restaurants about four blocks down Pine, and there's a good bookstore down that way too..." Piper kept her eyes on the road as she said all this, but Paige wasn't that fooled.

"Wait. Are you saying I should move into the Manor?" It was the question she'd been batting about her own mind, but Piper suggesting the move gave it a whole different dimension.

"It _would _make everything easier." Piper nodded to the road. "Potion mixing, vanquishing, you and Phoebe sneaking nights out that don't include your boring married sister..."

Paige's grimace was real this time. "You heard the backstory there." At Piper's arch nod, she sighed.

"I'm still getting used to this whole sibling thing. Figuring out all these _rules." _Piper looked at her sharply, but she went on, "And my loft is roach-infested and tiny and the floors tilt, but it's _mine_, you know?" She stared through the windshield. "I'm not sure I want to give that up."

Piper said quietly, "The Manor is yours, too."

Paige looked askanse out her side window – they were almost at Church Street. "I want it to be. But I've kind of gotten the impression that you don't really want me there."

Piper began to protest that of course that wasn't true, but just as they were about to turn onto the 2200 block of Church, the memory came back to her: Phoebe'd said almost the same thing to Prue the night she came home from New York, and they'd gone back and forth about ... the meaning of the house, which had been in the family for generations. "I grew up here too," Phoebe had said. "No history lesson needed." Suddenly, Piper was furious again – with herself. _The whole point is to _keep _history from repeating, remember?_

She forced her grip on the wheel to relax before she turned to Paige. "I've always struggled with making a good first impression." A tentative smile in reply. "There is so much we've all missed. I don't want to miss any more. I know Phoebe doesn't." She gazed levelly at Paige. "We've got a spare bedroom. It's yours, if you want it."

Paige looked at her, and nodded. "I do." Almost in the same breath she added, "And I'm so glad you offered just _before_ the fumigation was scheduled."


	17. The Demon and Ben Turner, Part 2

"The Demon and Ben Turner, Part 2"

She managed to graze him, singe him, and certainly enrage him, but hard as she tried Prue couldn't kill Delic. He'd inflicted further injuries, as well, though she and he parried about equally well, and gradually, they came to stalemate, and silence.

With her back against the craggy wall as they tousled, Prue saw the red rimmed eyes materialize behind him before he did. With all her strength she fling again him away from her, muttering snidely with her remaining breath, "What you don't know is going hurt you, Delic. And I only want to be there when it does."

He caught himself as he landed, turning to sneer at her, "And I want the same with you, witch." With that, and a wink to toward Klea, he shimmered out.

Prue faced Klea, all too aware that she was not ready for this fight. Her clothes were blood stained, and the cuts underneath were enough to make her more than wince. But Klea was eyeing her, full of contemptuous loathing, and there was no way she'd dare flinch now.

"You fight well, I suppose. Well, all the better. She would be disappointed if the child she went to all this trouble to get lacked killer instinct." Klea's small self-satisfied smile grew as comprehension and dread dawned in tandom on Prue's face. That the Seer had recruited an acomplice ... Prue had to push away the near despair with an effort. She still held the trump card, didn't she?

"Even if she succeeds, does she actually think she can keep the Source from finding out?" Prue moved away from the wall, not wanting to get cornered. "He'd kill her for even thinking of disrupting his plan."

Klea's answering laugh was shrill, almost feline. In a near blink, they were nose to nose. "By the time he would even suspect, she'll be unstoppable." She smiled, Cheshire-like. "Of course, so little is stopping us now. Merely my own little wish to watch him hand you over. Then I can be sure we have him back."

Prue just raised an eyebrow. "You mean so _you_ can have him back, don't you?" She made a show of brushing past Klea, and heading to the entrance to the cavern. The twists and turns of the Underworld's passages were still something she was getting oriented to, and she was trying to mentrally retrace her steps when from behind her came Klea's voice.

"You think there is any distinction? Who, witch, do you think invited him into the Brotherhood? Who has been at his side for a century? And who do you think he shared his plans for the Charmed Ones with?" Prue nearly turned back around in her impatience, but Klea wasn't finished. "Who, witch, do you think taught him," her gravelly voice dropped to a whisper, "_everything _he knows?" Prue did turn then, and raised a face filled with loathing toward the already dematerializing figure.

Again the Cheshire grin. "We'll come for you soon enough, witch. And once she's pulled out of you what she wants, well, we'll send you into oblivion. And he will simply look the other way."

She felt like Gretel, following little familiar clues back to the conjured wooden door. And it struck her,

anew, how out of place it looked against the cragged stone of the passageway. She let herself wonder why all that effort had been made before realizing she hadn't had the conjured key with her when Delic made his entrance. Prue set her jaw and raised her arm to knock at the door.

The expression on Cole's face when he slowly opened the door could best be described as "due consideration". He silently motioned her inside, and then deliberately, silently, checked the passageway for any traffic. Finally he closed the door, and eyed the room itself before turning to her. Again, the inscrutable look as he considered her, taking in the bruises he could see on her face.

With renewed impatience, she shrugged past him and strode into the kitchen, going straight for soap, towels, and the tap. She'd already seen that whoever it was exactly who had conjured this illusion had, in purely demonic fashion, seen no need for any sort of first aid kit. She was tending to the shiner over her left eye when she heard him say behind her, "I take it the Seer is still keeping Delic in the dark."

She put down the washcloth. "You would know better than I would."

She couldn't see his grimace. _ Klea is sinking her claws in. And all the best laid plans would turn to dust._

Aloud, and just behind her now, he said, "Don't be so sure." He reached for the washcloth, ran it under the tap, and then balled it gently into his hand. She flinched away when the damp cloth touched the first still slowly bleeding cut, just below her collarbone. They both knew it wasn't from the pain.

She gestured at her chest, and nodded at the cloth even as she avoided looking him in the eye. "This is Delic's handiwork, and I'm supposed to believe you actually give a ..." She gave a small laugh, and brought her fingers to the blue-black skin around her eye.

He reached out and pulled her hand away. "Yes, you are." They stood there a moment. Then Cole whispered against her hair, "How close did he get to - ?"

There was little anger left in her voice as she studied the sink in front of them. "Close enough that any further and there wouldn't be anything left for the Seer to pull out of me." She smiled, wryly, before pulling her hand out of his grasp.

"'A better Dantalion...'" He muttered this realization softly, and then, on surer footing, said simply, "Delic never could spin a plot worth a damn." This time, he didn't need to see her face to picture the glimmer of hope re-emerge. Before he ventured to pick up the washcloth again, he added, "not even fifty years ago, when conspiracies grew on trees."

"What did you think of him a hundred years ago?" He could feel the tension in her body; and he knew both that she wanted this particular answer and what larger answer she couldn't bring herself to demand.

"He was single-minded, and I admired that, at the time. But his ambition always annoyed me." He laid his hands lightly on her wrists, and when she didn't tense he began to gently stroke her lower arms.

"You aren't the first time he's gone overboard in the name of reputation and lost sight of the larger picture."

Putting aside her curiosity about that, she said, "And now?" She still stood apart from him, her eyes determinedly on the sink.

He slightly increased the pressure of his hands against her arms. "Ask me what you really want to know, Prue."

Again, he can see without seeing that her jaw was set, that she was working herself up to it. And then, rapid fire_. _ "Why aren't you going along with the Seer?" A beat. "Why does it matter to you what happens to this child?" That it took something out of her to admit that to him was evident; not from her voice, but from her hands, gripping the edge of the basin so tightly her knuckles were white.

The silence hung between them a moment.

"I never got the chance to answer your earlier question," he finally said. Only remembering what that question was allowed her to loosen her hold. With a hand on each of her shoulders he turned her towards him. "Something else I'll hold against him."

She squared her shoulders, preparing herself for ... well, of course she didn't know exactly what. But what he said next – no, she couldn't have prepared for that.

"I didn't excel during that appearance before the Source, Prue. Not the way you imagine, anyway." He gave his own self deprecating laugh. "Oh, it looked that way, I'm sure. But between my first three years on the surface, and then the isolation of her pariah status once we were recalled..." He shook his head, and again came that rueful smile. "My soul was brighter than it had any business being. I had to fight to stay as detached as I did."

Her shock could hardly dare give way to hope, and she picked her way carefully. The edge of the sink jutted against her hips, and she said, "So what you said before the Source _was _calculation, but also ..."

"Sheer terror that I was going to lose her." She couldn't help the flash of recognition in her eyes as she looked at him then. The knowing look he gave her in return only deepened when he went on, "And do you have any idea how damned difficult it was to push that memory out of my mind? Out of my soul?" He pulled her to him, and whispered against her ear, "Of course you do."

Her nod did not come without a dose of suspicious awareness. "How could you possibly know about that?" The fact that she was between a rock and hard place reasserted itself.

His gaze was level. "She was the mother of the Charmed Ones. The occaisonal spy could be spared, for a red letter day. The entire Underworld knew within hours." The flicks of anger and awe in her eyes, quickly pushed back, prompted him to add, "I was at City Hall, putting a completely different operation into the works. But the next day I tracked down that spy, asked him what he'd seen."

Her bravado joined the evil coursing through her mind and body in asking, "Long range planning?"

His answering smile was sinister. "The thrill of picturing those three motherless, powerless little girls who everyone thought could no longer pose a threat to the Source." He reached out, and ran the pad of his thumb down her throat, "And who could be vanquished just as soon as the old witch keeled over."

Her own developing inscrutable look was on display then, a sight that thrilled him in the here and now.

"However, all he would talk about was ... you, standing and shouting on that dock."

She cut her eyes at him. "Obviously, at the time..."

He mirrored the look in acknowledgment. "It was nothing more than a passing curiosity.

I dismissed it, and went on my way. Even while preparing for the Triad mission, when they told me what," and here, finally, he did look at her and laugh, "_Rex Buckland _and _Hannah Abbott _had observed."

She would have rolled her eyes at the taunt, or even voiced the curious thought it inspired about whether warlocks actually had their own names, if it hadn't reminded her of Klea. _Sweet oblivion, but nothing to show for it? No! _

"The Triad knew we had something there." Again, his lips sought her ear. "Every kindness, every flattery he showed her tore you up, didn't it?"

She couldn't deny it – didn't want to, except to stop the terror the thought of failure inspired, especially with the hope of success so close. "Yes," she ground out, evenly.

The look he gave her was so deliberately thoughtful, she had no doubt he'd been waiting to savor the admission – that one, and, also, "And the thought of she and I, out on the town, while you sat at home poring over theories and constructing flow charts..." His thumb traced its way along her collarbone, barely minding the welts, which had begun to congeal. Pain, rage, the despair he was dangling before her again, all came out in a hiss. Only the quirk of his mouth betrayed that he heard her, as he went on, "not _jealousy, _not then, no, but no one would listen, hm? Even though you were growing more sure by the day..."

He took her hand and traced it along the starched thinly stripped cotton of his dress shirt, slowly, in the pattern of his markings. He looked her in the eye, and this whisper was steel. "No one would understand your terror."

She didn't imagine that he backed her over and against the sink basin, for he did, though it might have felt like she imagined it. But she wanted this admitted, even so. Just to take the given chance...

"None of them."

The hint of bitterness, even now, amused him. "You held it in. Again."

Numbly, she nodded. Then through her weary dread came the sudden memory of the morning after their wedding night, and how she'd glimpsed the tremble in his hands when he'd told her about their audience with the Source.

So she began to see, began to let herself recognize that he was giving her an answer. "I didn't have much of a choice."

He picked up the washcloth again, ran it under the tap afresh. Set it on the basin's edge. "Neither did I". He laid a hand against her abdomen, and met the remaining wariness in her gaze. "And I want my child to understand what all of that means," his other hand found hers even as he murmured, "in the marrow of his bones."

She knew she'd been holding her breath, and she let it out slowly. He watched her face, letting his fingers dance against her open palm. "Were you really so worried, Prue?"

It came out in her second exhale. "Worried? No. Terrified of forfeiting my place in the game before it had barely gotten started?" She jerked her hand away from his touch, even as she dropped her gaze to his hand, still against her abdomen. "Oh, yes."

The game. Her further admission, though it struck a chord, couldn't fully override the renewed attention the sword hanging over both their heads demanded. "How close," he tried the question again,

"did he get?"

In answer, silently, she pulled off her blouse. Most of the shallow welts have congealed over, but one or two still lazily dribble blood. He eyed the streaks of dried blood, which ended just past her ribcage. "He probably would have gone further, if I hadn't fought back." But there wasn't just bravado in her voice – the terror of defeat was there, too.

He again picked up the washcloth, and with it, the bar of soap by the faucet. "And we probably wouldn't be having this conversation now if he was already in oblivion." Meticulously, he began to wash and clean the cuts.

She gritted her teeth, remembering the pain newly inflicted with each swipe of the cloth. "I tried, damnit."

He shook his head, both at her, and at his memories. _Delic, insisting on chasing terrified mortals as San Francisco burned to the ground, while he, newly admitted to the state bar, and adjusting once again to the royal court-like intrigue of the Brotherhood, proposed taking the opportunity of the great earthquake to seize the power of the Nexus. "You overstep your place, Belthazor." Haughty contempt gleamed in Delic's eyes. "Not that I should be surprised. Spawn of a pitiable foolish mortal and a disobedient whore, what else could you do?" The ensuing fight was savagely elegant, and only broken up by the appearance of Raynor, come to give the news that a team had been approved to surveil the site of the Nexus. _

"I know." He tapped a damp finger against her jaw. "I know very well." The cuts were as clean as they could get, and Cole finally set aside the bloody cloth. He stepped back, contemplating her and her words.

"Compared to the Seer, Delic's unimportant. But he's finally gotten the position he's always wanted, and he'd been preparing for it for a century and half." He gave her a cold, slow smile. "And he's now just one step below the Source." He shrugged before turning and heading towards their living room, throwing over his shoulder, "If you'd care to try again tomorrow, be my guest."

She stood a moment, the calculus of the plans, counterplans, and various loyalties going through her mind. Then she picked up her blood-streaked blouse from the floor, and shrugged into it before walking determinedly into their bedroom, where she exchanged it for a clean one.

When she entered the living area, he was again deep in the study of his law books. She sat down, legs crossed at the knee, her back to him, and waited. Perhaps ten minutes passed in silence between them before Prue said, quietly spitting out each word, "Did the Source make your mother plead for her life?"

The provocation got him to his feet, at least, and for that instant it was worth it. She rose, and faced him as he came toward her. There was cunning in his eyes, like a rattlesnake slowly coiling, but making no move to strike. Yet.

"Mm-hm. Said she was entirely in his debt, that she owed him my life."

Her dread rose up again, and, desperate, she let a current spector haunt a former. "Then you're something of a hypocrite." This brought him around the sofas, until they were almost nose-to-nose.

"Considering we both owe the Source our lives," he laid a hand, lightly, on her scar, "and that I am not demanding very much, at the moment, besides the ability to defend what is mine from a threat that I know very well," he glanced, pointedly, at her black eye, "I would strongly disagree."

Even through the turmoil inside of her she could see that he knew this would be a major concession won. Yet her own mental voice, shifting in the same way her instincts had, remarked that he was right, and that moreover, she wanted what he was offering. And that even if he was lying, well, two could play rqually well at that game. This one was different, but not much, surely, and she still wanted in.

Restraining herself from covering her black eye, she held her hands together in front of her. "What do you want me to say," came out as a clear statement, even if the undertone was forced.

He looked at her, and yes, she could see the demonic mirth and schadenfreude there, but there was also human impatience and exasperation. She didn't want to contemplate the idea that it even seemed to be fond exasperation.

"Ask."

In that moment, the question that came out was borne of a very practical desperation. "What could you even do that would -"

His hand slid up to her shoulder. "Let me worry about that." The remaining drops of wary doubt in her eyes prompt him to add, the steeled exasperation again in his voice, "And for once in your life, let someone actually protect you."

The breath was pulled, not knocked out of her, this time, and so she didn't know how she said it, but once the words were out, and her hands held out, it was as thought it couldn't have been done any other way. He saw the silent "Okay" form on her lips first, and waited.

Then, aloud and precise, "Then protect me, please." For all her decisiveness, he could also see the uncertainty in her eyes, as though she was feeling her way through the entirely unfamiliar.

His answering laugh was gentler than might be predicted. "You don't even know how to ask the question, do you?"

A slow, careful shake of her head. "I'd never needed to know."

Over dinner, Klea's taunts reasserted themselves in her mind, now as material to analyze, and to ... ask, about. "When exactly," she ventured, over the salad that had become a staple of their dinners, "did you join the Brotherhood?"

He set down his fork, considering the likely reason for the question. "I was sixteen. Mother was between assignments, so we were here, and Raynor approached her with the idea. Said demonic guidance was what I needed, and that it was 'high time' I found a place in the Underworld."

Prue took that in, adjusting again her assessment of Klea. "He became your ...mentor," she looked up to seek confirmation, "immediately?"

Cole shook his head, eyeing her plate. Relatively soon, he knew, her appetite would change, and it would be even more vital that she kept her strength up. "No, only about five years later, after I'd returned from law school and passed the bar, when we were reacting to the great earthquake."

She paused in the lifting of her glass, and looked across at him, then towards the living area with his desk and books, then back at him, in mild bafflement. "You're actually a fully qualified lawyer."

He nodded. "Under scores of alias over the years, whatever the mission required. But yes."

She raised her eyebrows. "The Source agreed to that?" And even as the words came out of her mouth, they seemed to miss the obvious. She tried again, feeling the laughter in his gaze. "Why would he want you to go through the whole process of getting a human degree? Why not just -" she gestured with the glass, indicating the table, the meal, and the suite itself, "let you play a charade if you needed to, whenever you were on the surface?"

"Some part of it was a desire to be rid of me for a while, so there was that." That rueful smile again. "But I suppose he remembered that audience, because Raynor made a point of telling me that the Source wanted to 'test the power of misplaced expectation'." He glanced at her, and her own knowing smile betrayed thoughts of the county courthouse, the guardians, and the demonic conspiracy. "But mostly, it's just practicality. Some things can't be faked well enough."

She nodded, and they ate in silence for a while, as Prue toyed again with how to raise the issue of Klea.

"So, when you returned..."

"I was out of step, 'contaminated' by the surface, and although Raynor was the one I looked to most, he decided Klea should be the one to get me reacquianted with life down here, with raiding missions, with the politics, with ..." He trailed off, taking a sip of water.

Prue, telling herself she didn't _need _to know, not now, asked, "So I'd imagine there were other plots. It wasn't just a series of quick raids for the next ninety-four years." She eyed him. "Was it."

He shook his head, relief at the diversion well concealed. "We may have had a hand in delaying the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, in confounding some Allied efforts during the Second World War,

and in helping rumors spread about what went on the Haight Ashbury in the late '60s. Oh," he decided just then and there to brag slightly, and test her reaction in the process, "and we more or less engineered the Milk-Moscone assasination later in the year your mother was killed."

Barely batting an eyelash, Prue didn't disappoint. "'May have'?" And if he didn't think twice, he could have nearly convinced himself she was almost _flirting. _

They stood, the meal finished. "I am trying," he replied, "to develop in my old age a degree of modest objectivity about my accomplishments."

At that, she merely raised a familiar eyebrow. "Objectively, then. Who is Klea to you?"

He'd just, neither of them failed to notice, gathered up their silverware. "She was the first demon I really noticed, my first and best raiding partner, and the best sounding board I could have had." Idly, he let the unused spoons drop from his grip. "She taught me how to be demonic, before even Raynor took an interest."

"You must have been close ... allies." He didn't fail to note the effort she must make, even now, to keep her voice even.

"She took something of a special interest in me, and," now the forks clank back down on the plate, "it's made sense all these years to maintain the alliance."

Deliberately or not, he was giving her no quarter to ask the question that by now she simply wanted answered and done with. Lifting their stacked plates, she threw it out. "What else did she teach you?"

The cunning, coiling look reappeared as he came around the table. "More or less, basically everything I needed to know."

Her bravado is pure skepticism, for the fact that this was one more, perhaps final test of the persistance of her own mortal insecurities was obvious in a milisecond. "Really," came out dry and deadpan.

Two feet from her, he shrugged. "Well. Not everything." His hands were on her shoulders an instant later, and then he was kissing her, deeply. It was Belthazor, and along with his desire to pull suffering out of her like a magician's handkerchief she felt a shadow of the all-consuming terror that she had pushed back into resignation as she lay down on their wedding night. His tongue flicked against hers, and she bristled at the craftiness of it. The guile, and the gall. And then in the next instant his hold on her shoulders loosened, and the kiss became not any less intense, but more complex. There was the fondness she'd glimpsed, and a strong admiration. And what really frightened and repulsed her – gratitude and protectiveness, in near equal measure.

When they broke apart, her first thought came from the ice now in her veins. "You did tell her your plans for the Triad mission, of course."

He smiled slightly at the pure distilled curiosity in her voice. "Down to every last detail. Conspiracies within conspiracies are her area of expertise."

She contemplated that, and him. "For an expert on twists and doublecrosses, she's very sure she'll win."

A nod of acknowledgment. "We were sure about the Triad mission, too." He gathered up the silverware again, starting with the knives.

No fear, and no hesitation. "The power of misplaced expectation. Hm." She followed him into their kitchen with the glasses. "Your mother, what was her name? And when was she -"

He placed the cutlery in the sink. "Sartra, and she was vanquished in 1923."


End file.
